La Jolla, CA – Researchers have long wondered how nuclear pores – the all-important channels that control the flow of information in and out of a cell’s nucleus – double in number to prepare for the split to come when a cell divides. Now, for the first time, scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies watched as new funnel-like pore structures formed from scratch, and inserted themselves into the nuclear membrane.
La Jolla, CA – Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have discovered a neural circuit that is likely to play an important role in the visual perception of moving objects. Their finding, published in the April issue of the journal Neuron, forces neurobiologists to rethink the neural pathways that our brain relies on to detect motion.
La Jolla, CA – Genetically engineered mice convinced scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies that it was time to overhaul widely held beliefs about how a powerful tumor suppressor called p53 is controlled in cells. Their new model of p53 regulation has important implications for the development of anticancer drugs.
La Jolla, CA – On April 10, 2006, the Salk Institute revealed the latest version of its Master Plan Update. This long-term development plan will serve as a blueprint for the growth and development of the Institute for the next 50 years. The updated plan stays true to the original vision for the campus developed by Jonas Salk and Louis Kahn, and will allow the Institute to remain a world leader in the rapidly evolving world of basic medical research.
La Jolla, CA – Ronald M. Evans, Ph.D., professor and head of the Gene Expression Laboratory of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, has been named a 2006 winner of the prestigious Gairdner Award for his pioneering research into nuclear hormone receptors.
La Jolla, CA – Salk Institute professor Ursula Bellugi, who pioneered the study of the biological foundation of language, has been elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences. The Academy made the announcement today during its 144th annual meeting in Washington, DC. Election to the Academy recognizes distinguished and continuing achievements in original research, and is considered one of the highest honors accorded a U.S. scientist.
La Jolla, CA – For the first time ever, researchers at the Salk Institute have pinpointed a protein specifically responsible for extending lifespan and youthfulness without disrupting an organism’s response to some forms of stress, development and fertility controlled by the insulin signaling pathway.
La Jolla, CA – Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have identified an important circuit in the spinal cord that controls the speed with which our leg muscles contract and relax. Their findings mark an important milestone in understanding the neural circuitry that coordinates walking movements – one of the main obstacles in developing new treatments for spinal cord injuries.
La Jolla, CA – Dr. Irwin Jacobs, co-founder of QUALCOMM; Richard Freeman, president and chief operating officer of the San Diego Padres; and Ted Waitt, co-founder of Gateway, have been named to the positions of vice chair of the Salk Institute’s Board of Trustees. They join vice chair, Dr. Jennifer Howse, president of the March of Dimes; and Jerry Kohlberg, chairman of the Board of Trustees, to form the upper echelon of board leadership for the Salk Institute.
La Jolla, CA – When HIV and other retroviruses invade a cell in the human body, a fierce battle ensues between the intruder and the cell’s defense team: members of the APOBEC family, a handful of closely related antiviral proteins that try to disarm the invading virus by scrambling its genetic information.
La Jolla, CA – Reading the DNA recipes of the 25,000 or so genes within a human cell, a process called transcription, is a highly scripted endeavor. Like the main character in a movie, an enzyme called RNA Polymerase plays the lead role and is supported by an ever-changing cast of supporting transcription factors that come and go as the script demands.
La Jolla, CA – Mutations in a protein, called APC, that normally functions to suppress the development of tumors, cause 85 percent of all colon cancers, the number two cancer killer in the US. For years, scientists thought they knew how: The normal APC protein destroys a protein called Β-catenin, which turns on genes responsible for cell growth. The mutant APC proteins that are commonly found in colon cancer and melanoma, are not able to destroy Β-catenin, leading to unchecked cell growth.
La Jolla, CA – Ravenous mice that chomp down as if there were no tomorrow yet stay lean and mean? Shutting down two genes that modulate a body’s energy balance transformed these animals into fidgeting, highly efficient fat burning machines, report scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in this week’s issue of Cell Metabolism.
La Jolla, CA – For the first time, scientists have caught a glimpse of the brain as it predicted the future location of a fast moving object in real time.
La Jolla, CA – Caryl D. Philips, a longtime supporter of graduate student training at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., and Michael Pulitzer, former chairman of a newspaper empire, recently were elected to the Institute’s Board of Trustees.
La Jolla, CA – A research scientist who recently discovered a critical message-relaying pathway that underlies the development of both cancer and type 2 diabetes, in January joined the Salk Institute for Biological Studies as an assistant professor in the institute’s Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory and Dulbecco Laboratory for Cancer Research.
La Jolla, CA – Previous studies have shown that undifferentiated human embryonic stem cells (hESC) can survive in the brains of laboratory rats with Parkinson’s disease. But until now it was unclear whether hESCs can become fully functional members of the host animal’s neuronal architecture – a basic necessity if stem cells are ever to be used in medical treatments replenishing missing or damaged neurons in human patients with neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease.
La Jolla, CA – Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies discovered that cells co-opted the machinery that usually repairs broken strands of DNA to protect the integrity of chromosomes. This finding solves for the first time an important question that has long puzzled scientists.
La Jolla, CA – Researchers have solved the three dimensional structure of the long thread-like fibers that fill the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients. The structure reveals the proteins that make up the fibrils lock onto each other much like a zipper on a jacket. This advance, reported in the Nov. 14th early online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), helps illuminate the molecular roots of Alzheimer’s and possibly other degenerative diseases of the brain.
La Jolla, CA – An unexpected twist to a discovery reported just two months ago may significantly improve our understanding about the molecular origins of diabetes.
