La Jolla, CA—Dr. Tatyana Sharpee, an assistant professor in the Laboratory for Computational Biology, has been named a 2009 McKnight Scholar. She will receive a grant of $225,000 over a three-year period to study “Discrete representation of visual shapes in the brain.”
La Jolla, CA — The Salk Institute for Biological Studies has been awarded a $6.6 million grant – the largest single award in the latest competition — by the California Institute Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) for research aimed at translating basic science into clinical cures. The funds are part of $67.7 million Early Translational Grants CIRM provided to 15 research organizations on Wednesday.
La Jolla, CA – Salk researcher Marc R. Montminy, M.D., Ph.D., a professor in the Clayton Foundation Laboratories for Peptide Biology, has been elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s most prestigious honorary society for scientists. The Academy made the announcement today during its 146th annual meeting in Washington, DC.
La Jolla, CA — The Salk Institute has received a $5.5 million grant from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust to launch the Salk Center for Nutritional Genomics. The new Center will employ a molecular approach to nutrition and its impact on the role of metabolism on the immune system, cancer, diabetes and lifespan, thereby increasing the understanding of how nutrients affect health.
La Jolla, CA—New research at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies casts the role of a neuronal growth factor receptor—long suspected to facilitate the toxic effects of beta amyloid in Alzheimer’s disease—in a new light, suggesting the molecule actually protects the neuron in the periphery from beta amyloid-induced damage.
La Jolla, CA—About 1.25 million neurons in the retina — each of which views the world only through a small jagged window called a receptive field — collectively form the seamless picture we rely on to navigate our environment. Receptive fields fit together like pieces of a puzzle, preventing “blind spots” and excessive overlap that could blur our perception of the world, according to researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.
La Jolla, CA—Salk Institute scientist Reuben J. Shaw, Ph.D., has been selected a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Early Career Scientist, the HHMI announced today.
La Jolla, CA—The Salk Institute today announced that it has signed a strategic alliance agreement with sanofi-aventis, establishing a joint program that supports cutting-edge research and promotes an exchange of discoveries focused on scientific advances and therapeutic applications.
La Jolla, CA—The visual system has limited capacity and cannot process everything that falls onto the retina. Instead, the brain relies on attention to bring salient details into focus and filter out background clutter. Two recent studies by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, one study employing computational modeling techniques and the other experimental techniques, have helped to unravel the mechanisms underlying attention.
La Jolla, CA — A receptor for glutamate, the most prominent neurotransmitter in the brain, plays a key role in the process of “unlearning,” report researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Their findings, published in the current issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, could eventually help scientists develop new drug therapies to treat a variety of disorders, including phobias and anxiety disorders, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder.
La Jolla, CA—A newly identified molecular pathway that directs stem cells to produce glial cells yields insights into the neurobiology of Down's syndrome and a number of central nervous system disorders characterized by too many glial cells, according to a recent study by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.
La Jolla, CA—A molecular switch found in the fat tissue of obese mice is a critical factor in the development of insulin resistance, report scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Previously found to increase glucose production by the liver during fasting, the culprit—a protein known as CREB—is also activated in fat tissue of obese mice where it promotes insulin resistance.
La Jolla, CA — Ever since insects developed a taste for vegetation, plants have faced the same dilemma: use limited resources to out-compete their neighbors for light to grow, or, invest directly in defense against hungry insects. Now, an international team of scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the Institute of Investigaciones Fisiológicas y Ecológicas Vinculadas a la Agronomía (IFEVA) has discovered how plants weigh the tradeoffs and redirect their energies accordingly.
La Jolla, CA — The Salk Institute today named principal investigator Inder M. Verma the first incumbent of the Irwin Mark Jacobs Chair in Exemplary Life Sciences. Established to honor its namesake’s exceptional leadership in business and philanthropy, the honor is given to an internationally renowned senior Salk scientist who has made extraordinary discoveries in basic biomedical research and has contributed to the direction and vitality of the Institute.
LA Jolla, CA—Our eyes are in constant motion. Even when we attempt to stare straight at a stationary target, our eyes jump and jiggle imperceptibly. Although these unconscious flicks, also known as microsaccades, had long been considered mere “motor noise,” researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies found that they are instead actively controlled by the same brain region that instructs our eyes to scan the lines in a newspaper or follow a moving object.
LA Jolla, CA—Fruit flies and humans share most of their genes, including 70 percent of all known human disease genes. Taking advantage of this remarkable evolutionary conservation, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies transformed the fruit fly into a laboratory model for an innovative study of gliomas, the most common malignant brain tumors.
La Jolla, CA—Best known for its effects on fruit ripening and flower fading, the gaseous plant hormone ethylene shortens the shelf life of many fruits and plants by putting their physiology on fast-forward. In recent years, scientists learned a lot about the different components that transmit ethylene signals inside cells. But a central regulator of ethylene responses, a protein known as EIN2, resisted all their efforts.
La Jolla, CA–Unraveling the genetics of social behavior and cognitive abilities, researchers at the University of Utah and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have traced the role of two genes,GTF2I and GTF2IRD, in a rare genetic disorder known as Williams Syndrome.
La Jolla, CA–How are neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s initiated, and why is age the major risk factor? A recent study of a protein called MOCA (Modifier of Cell Adhesion), carried out at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, provides new clues to the answers of these fundamental questions.
La Jolla, CA — “Remember when…?” is how many a wistful trip down memory lane begins. But just how the brain keeps tabs on what happened and when is still a matter of speculation. A computational model developed by scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies now suggests that newborn brain cells—generated by the thousands each day—add a time-related code, which is unique to memories formed around the same time.
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