Margaret Faye Wilson, una líder en las industrias bancaria y minorista, falleció el 10 de julio. Se desempeñó como fideicomisaria en la Junta de Salk de 2010 a 2019 y fue una generosa donante del Instituto a lo largo de los años, incluyendo el apoyo al evento anual principal del Instituto, Symphony at Salk.
LA JOLLA—El sábado 19 de agosto, el Salk Institute celebrará los 27 años de Symphony at Salk, su principal evento anual de recaudación de fondos y concierto bajo las estrellas, con los impresionantes sonidos de la San Diego Symphony y la artista invitada Jennifer Hudson, artista discográfica ganadora de dos premios GRAMMY, actriz ganadora de un premio de la Academia y productora ganadora de premios Tony y Emmy.
LA JOLLA—La vida del pequeño gusano llamado Caenorhabditis elegans consiste principalmente en buscar comida, comer comida y poner huevos. Por lo tanto, cuando cualquiera de estos comportamientos se interrumpe, hay motivos de preocupación. En un nuevo estudio, científicos del Instituto Salk descubrieron que el químico cerebral de “bienestar” dopamina regula el comportamiento ansioso de los gusanos en presencia de depredadores que mordisquean.
LA JOLLA—A nivel mundial, ocurren más de un millón de muertes al año a causa de enfermedades diarreicas que provocan deshidratación y desnutrición. Sin embargo, no existe vacunas para combatir o prevenir estas enfermedades, que son causadas por bacterias como ciertas cepas de E. coli. En cambio, las personas con infecciones bacterianas deben confiar en que el cuerpo adopte una de dos estrategias de defensa: eliminar a los intrusos o debilitarlos, pero dejarlos en el organismo. Si el cuerpo opta por debilitar a las bacterias, la enfermedad puede manifestarse sin diarrea, pero la infección sigue siendo contagiosa, un proceso conocido como portador asintomático.
LA JOLLA—El Instituto Salk da la bienvenida al profesor asistente Daniel Bayless, una neurobióloga que estudia la influencia de las hormonas sexuales en la interacción social y el comportamiento de los ratones. Bayless se une al cuerpo docente de neurociencia de renombre mundial del Instituto Salk, un equipo colaborativo que trabaja para descubrir cómo funciona nuestro cerebro con el fin de que podamos desarrollar resiliencia frente al estrés, el envejecimiento y las enfermedades.
LA JOLLA—El sistema inmunitario protege al organismo de invasores, como bacterias, virus o tumores, gracias a su compleja red de proteínas, células y órganos. Las células inmunitarias especializadas, llamadas células T citotóxicas, pueden convertirse en células efectoras de vida corta que destruyen las células infectadas o cancerosas dentro de nuestro cuerpo. Una pequeña parte de esas células efectoras permanece después de una infección y se convierte en células de memoria de vida más larga, que “recuerdan” las infecciones y responden cuando estas reaparecen. Pero se sabía poco sobre qué influye en que las células T citotóxicas se transformen en estos subtipos de células T efectoras y de memoria.
LA JOLLA—La vida celular en el interior de una planta es tan vibrante como su flor. En cada tejido vegetal —desde la punta de la raíz hasta la punta de la hoja— hay cientos de tipos de células que transmiten información sobre las necesidades funcionales y los cambios ambientales. Ahora, una nueva tecnología desarrollada por científicos del Instituto Salk permite capturar este mundo interno de las plantas con una resolución sin precedentes, lo que abre la puerta a comprender cómo responden las plantas a un clima cambiante y conduce al desarrollo de cultivos más resilientes.
LA JOLLA—Françoise Gilot, artista, autora de bestsellers y esposa del fallecido fundador del Instituto Salk y pionero de las vacunas Jonas Salk, falleció el 6 de junio en un hospital de Manhattan a la edad de 101 años.
LA JOLLA—Situated at the intersection of the human immune system and the brain are microglia, specialized brain immune cells that play a crucial role in development and disease. Although the importance of microglia is undisputed, modeling and studying them has remained a difficult task.
LA JOLLA—In addition to communicating with neurotransmitters, the brain also uses small proteins called neuropeptides. Neuropeptides send signals between neurons, working similarly to neurotransmitters but with key differences like a greater size and an ability to travel far away from the neuron that produces them. Though their importance is widely recognized, the way neuropeptides move around the brain and influence neurons has remained poorly understood—until now.
LA JOLLA—The Salk Institute and Autobahn Labs, an early-stage drug discovery incubator, will work together to identify and advance promising initial scientific discoveries through the preliminary steps of drug discovery and development. Autobahn Labs will invest up to $5 million per project for Salk discoveries that require access to drug development expertise and state-of-the art capabilities.
LA JOLLA—Five Salk Institute faculty members have been promoted for their notable, innovative contributions to science. These faculty members have demonstrated leadership in their disciplines, pushing the boundaries of basic scientific research. Assistant Professors Sung Han, Dmitry Lyumkis, and Graham McVicker were promoted to associate professors, and Associate Professors Sreekanth Chalasani y Ye Zheng were promoted to professors. The promotions were based on Salk faculty and nonresident fellow recommendations and approved by Salk’s president and Board of Trustees on April 21, 2023.
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—Itch is a protective signal that animals use to prevent parasites from introducing potentially hazardous pathogens into the body. If a mosquito lands on a person’s arm, they sense its presence on their skin and quickly scratch the spot to remove it. Itchiness due to something like a crawling insect is known as “mechanical” and is distinct from “chemical” itchiness generated by an irritant such as the mosquito’s saliva if it were to bite the person’s arm. While both scenarios cause the same response (scratching), recent research by Salk Institute scientists has revealed that, in mice, a dedicated brain pathway drives the mechanical sensation and is distinct from the neural pathway that encodes the chemical sensation.
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 Iniciativa de Aprovechamiento de Plantas—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.
