LA JOLLA—Salk Institute Professor Susan Kaech, director of the NOMIS Center for Immunobiology and Microbial Pathogenesis, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She shares the honor with some of the world’s most accomplished leaders from science and technology, business, public affairs, education, the humanities, and the arts. Kaech and the new class of nearly 270 members will be inducted at a formal ceremony on September 30, 2023, at the Academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
LA JOLLA—Scientists often act as detectives, piecing together clues that alone may seem meaningless but together crack the case. Professor Reuben Shaw has spent nearly two decades piecing together such clues to understand the cellular response to metabolic stress, which occurs when cellular energy levels dip. Whether energy levels fall because the cell’s powerhouses (mitochondria) are failing or due to a lack of necessary energy-making supplies, the response is the same: get rid of the damaged mitochondria and create new ones.
LA JOLLA—Brains are like puzzles, requiring many nested and codependent pieces to function well. The brain is divided into areas, each containing many millions of neurons connected across thousands of synapses. These synapses, which enable communication between neurons, depend on even smaller structures: message-sending boutons (swollen bulbs at the branch-like tips of neurons), message-receiving dendrites (complementary branch-like structures for receiving bouton messages), and power-generating mitochondria. To create a cohesive brain, all these pieces must be accounted for.
LA JOLLA – Juckreiz ist ein Schutzsignal, das Tiere nutzen, um zu verhindern, dass Parasiten potenziell gefährliche Krankheitserreger in den Körper eindringen. Wenn eine Mücke auf dem Arm eines Menschen landet, nimmt dieser ihre Anwesenheit auf der Haut wahr und kratzt die Stelle schnell, um sie zu entfernen. Juckreiz, der durch etwas wie ein krabbelndes Insekt verursacht wird, wird als “mechanisch” bezeichnet und unterscheidet sich vom “chemischen” Juckreiz, der durch einen Reizstoff wie den Speichel der Mücke verursacht wird, wenn sie den Arm des Menschen beißen würde. Während beide Szenarien die gleiche Reaktion (Kratzen) hervorrufen, haben neue Forschungsergebnisse von Wissenschaftlern des Salk Institute gezeigt, dass bei Mäusen ein spezieller Gehirnpfad das mechanische Empfinden antreibt und sich vom neuronalen Pfad unterscheidet, der das chemische Empfinden kodiert.
LA JOLLA—Hess Corporation is donating $50 million to the Salk Institute’s Campaign for Discovery: The Power of Science, a seven-year, $750 million comprehensive fundraising campaign to attract the people and build the technology and space necessary to accelerate critical research. This gift will specifically advance Salk’s Initiative zur Nutzung von Pflanzen—an effort to mitigate climate change by optimizing plants and supporting wetlands to increase capture of excess atmospheric carbon—and provide vital infrastructure for this work by establishing the new Hess Center for Plant Science.
Congratulations to the awardees of the 2023 Kavli Small Equipment Grants! The program provides funds to buy or build small equipment designed to strengthen research capacity and capability.
LA JOLLA—The spinal cord acts as a messenger, carrying signals between the brain and body to regulate everything from breathing to movement. While the spinal cord is known to play an essential role in relaying pain signals, technology has limited scientists’ understanding of how this process occurs on a cellular level. Now, Salk scientists have created wearable microscopes to enable unprecedented insight into the signaling patterns that occur within the spinal cords of mice.
LA JOLLA—Cancer treatments have long been moving toward personalization—finding the right drugs that work for a patient’s unique tumor, based on specific genetic and molecular patterns. Many of these targeted therapies are highly effective, but aren’t available for all cancers, including non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLCs) that have an LKB1 genetic mutation. A new study led by Salk Institute Professor Reuben Shaw and former postdoctoral fellow Lillian Eichner, now an assistant professor at Northwestern University, revealed FDA-approved trametinib and entinostat (which is currently in clinical trials) can be given in tandem to produce fewer and smaller tumors in mice with LKB1-mutated NSCLC.
LA JOLLA—The artificial intelligence (AI) language model ChatGPT has captured the world’s attention in recent months. This trained computer chatbot can generate text, answer questions, provide translations, and learn based on the user’s feedback. Large language models like ChatGPT may have many applications in science and business, but how much do these tools understand what we say to them and how do they decide what to say back?
LA JOLLA—PlantACT! Plants for Climate Action, eine europäische Initiative zur Bündelung von Pflanzenwissenschaftlern zur Bekämpfung des Klimawandels, wird Salk-Professoren willkommen heißen Joanne Chory und Wolfgang Busch zu einer bevorstehenden zweitägigen Veranstaltung in New York City. Die Veranstaltung mit dem Titel ’Growing a Resilient Society", die vom New Yorker Büro der Universität zu Köln und Partnern veranstaltet wird, umfasst eine kostenlose öffentliche Podiumsdiskussion mit Chory und eine nur auf Einladung zugängliche Expertenwerkstatt mit einer Forschungspräsentation von Busch.
LA JOLLA—The Salk Institute has named Gerald Joyce as its next president, following an extensive, six-month search process. Having served as the Institute’s senior vice president and chief science officer since July, Joyce will succeed Rusty Gage, who will return to his lab full-time following a transformative leadership tenure that strengthened the Institute scientifically, culturally and organizationally.
LA JOLLA – Salk-Professor Christian Metallo has been recognized for his outstanding contributions to advancing science by being named the next holder of the Daniel and Martina Lewis Chair, effective January 1, 2023. Professor Geoffrey Wahl previously held this chair position.
LA JOLLA—As we age, the end caps of our chromosomes, called telomeres, gradually shorten. Now, Salk scientists have discovered that when telomeres become very short, they communicate with mitochondria, the cell’s powerhouses. This communication triggers a complex set of signaling pathways and initiates an inflammatory response that destroys cells that could otherwise become cancerous.
LA JOLLA (31. Januar 2023) – Professor am Salk Institute John Reynolds wurde zum Fellow der American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) im Jahr 2022 ernannt, der weltweit größten allgemeinen wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft und Verlegerin der Zeitschrift Wissenschaft. Reynolds gehört zu den 506 neuen AAAS-Mitgliedern, die sich über 24 wissenschaftliche Disziplinen erstrecken und von ihren Kollegen für ihre herausragenden Verdienste um die Wissenschaft nominiert wurden.
LA JOLLA—Approximately half of people with type 1 or type 2 diabetes experience peripheral neuropathy—weakness, numbness, and pain, primarily in the hands and feet. The condition occurs when high levels of sugar circulating in the blood damage peripheral nerves. Now, working with mice, Salk Institute researchers have identified another factor contributing to diabetes-associated peripheral neuropathy: altered amino acid metabolism.
LA JOLLA – Salk-Professor Ronald Evans and an interdisciplinary group of Institute researchers have been awarded a two-year, $1.5 million grant from the Sol Goldman Charitable Trust at the direction of cardiologist and Salk Trustee Benjamin Lewis. The award will fund a research project to explore connections between the gut, brain, and immune system in search of new therapies for patients with multiple sclerosis (MS).
LA JOLLA—Young children sometimes believe that the moon is following them, or that they can reach out and touch it. It appears to be much closer than is proportional to its true distance. As we move about our daily lives, we tend to think that we navigate space in a linear way. But Salk scientists have discovered that time spent exploring an environment causes neural representations to grow in surprising ways.
LA JOLLA—Numerous studies have shown health benefits of time-restricted eating including increase in life span in laboratory studies, making practices like intermittent fasting a hot topic in the wellness industry. However, exactly how it affects the body on the molecular level, and how those changes interact across multiple organ systems, has not been well understood. Now, Salk scientists show in mice how time-restricted eating influences gene expression across more than 22 regions of the body and brain. Gene expression is the process through which genes are activated and respond to their environment by creating proteins.
LA JOLLA – Übergewicht und Stoffwechselerkrankungen wie Diabetes sind in den Vereinigten Staaten extrem verbreitet. Winzige Proteine, sogenannte Mikroproteine, wurden in der Forschung lange Zeit übersehen, aber neue Beweise zeigen, dass sie eine wichtige Rolle im Stoffwechsel spielen. Forscher des Salk Institute haben herausgefunden, dass sowohl braunes als auch weißes Fett Tausende von bisher unbekannten Mikroproteinen enthält, und zeigen, dass eines dieser Mikroproteine namens Gm8773 den Appetit bei Mäusen steigern kann.
LA JOLLA—A drug developed by Salk Institute researchers acts like a master reset switch in the intestines. The compound, called FexD, has previously been found to lower cholesterol, burn fat, and ward off colorectal cancer in mice. Now, the team reports in Verhandlungen der Nationalen Akademie der Wissenschaften on December 12, 2022, that FexD can also prevent and reverse intestinal inflammation in mouse models of inflammatory bowel disease.
