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 植物利用计划—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.
拉霍亚—癌症治疗长期以来一直朝着个性化方向发展——根据患者独特的遗传和分子模式，找到适合患者的靶向药物。许多此类靶向疗法都非常有效，但并非适用于所有癌症，包括那些携带 LKB1 基因突变的非小细胞肺癌 (NSCLC)。由萨克研究所教授领导的一项新研究 鲁本-肖 前博士后研究员莉莲·艾希纳（Lillian Eichner）现任西北大学助理教授，她发现FDA批准的曲美替尼和依替司他（后者目前处于临床试验阶段）联合使用，可以使患有LKB1突变的非小细胞肺癌（NSCLC）的小鼠产生更少、更小的肿瘤。.
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, a European initiative founded to unite plant science experts in the effort to mitigate climate change, will welcome Salk Professors 乔安·乔里 和 沃尔夫冈·布施 to an upcoming two-day event in New York City. The event, called Growing a Resilient Society and hosted by the University of Cologne New York Office and partners, will feature a free public panel discussion with Chory and an invite-only experts’ workshop research presentation by Busch.
LA JOLLA—The Salk Institute has named 杰拉尔德·乔伊斯 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.
拉霍亚—索尔克教授 克里斯蒂安·梅塔洛 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 杰弗里·沃尔 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 (January 31, 2023)— Salk Institute Professor 约翰·雷诺兹 has been named a 2022 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal 科学. Reynolds is among 506 new AAAS Fellows spanning 24 scientific disciplines who were nominated by their peers for their distinguished efforts to advance science.
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.
拉霍亚—索尔克教授 罗纳德·埃文斯 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.
拉霍亚——许多研究表明，限时进食具有健康益处，包括在实验室研究中延长寿命，这使得间歇性禁食等做法成为健康产业的热门话题。然而，它对身体在分子层面的影响以及这些变化如何在多个器官系统中相互作用，这一点尚未得到充分理解。现在，索尔克科学家们在小鼠身上展示了限时进食如何影响身体和大脑 22 个以上区域的基因表达。基因表达是基因被激活并通过产生蛋白质来响应其环境的过程。.
拉荷亚——斯克尔研究所研究人员开发的一种药物，能够像肠道的总开关一样起作用。这种名为 FexD 的化合物，之前已被发现能够降低小鼠的胆固醇、燃烧脂肪并抵御结直肠癌。现在，该团队在 美国国家科学院院刊 2022年12月12日，在炎症性肠病小鼠模型中，FexD也能预防和逆转肠道炎症。.
加乔拉——癌症是由细胞异常过度生长引起的，是世界第二大死因。索尔克研究所的研究人员已经聚焦于激活癌基因的具体机制。癌基因是发生改变的基因，可以使正常细胞变成癌细胞。.
LA JOLLA—Despite decades of research, Alzheimer’s disease remains a debilitating and eventually fatal dementia with no effective treatment options. More than 95 percent of Alzheimer’s disease cases have no known origin. Now, scientists from the Salk Institute have found that neurons from people with Alzheimer’s disease show deterioration and undergo a late-life stress process called senescence. These neurons have a loss of functional activity, impaired metabolism, and increased brain inflammation.
LA JOLLA—Salk Professors 约瑟夫·埃克尔, 罗纳德·埃文斯, 鲁斯蒂·盖奇, 克里斯蒂安·梅塔洛, 萨奇达南达·潘达, 鲁本-肖, ，和 凯泰, along with Assistant Professor 杰西·迪克森, have been named to the Highly Cited Researchers list by Clarivate. This year’s list includes 6,938 researchers from 69 countries and identifies researchers who demonstrate “significant influence in their chosen field or fields through the publication of multiple highly cited papers.” Ecker and Gage have been named to this list every year since 2014, when the regular annual rankings began. Joseph Nery, a research assistant II in the Ecker lab, was also included on the list.
