News & HighlightsNews
Rockefeller graduate Monica Mugnier wins 2016 NIH Early Independence Award
Monica Mugnier, who completed her Ph.D. at Rockefeller earlier this year, is one of 16 junior investigators nationwide to receive a National Institutes of Health Director’s Early Independence Award. The award, which is part of the NIH’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research program, allows early-caree...
Study explains how an intestinal microbe protects against other, more dangerous bacteria
Antibiotics save millions of lives. But their tendency to kill helpful and harmful bacteria alike, coupled with the growing problem of antibiotic resistance, means that they are not without their downside. Probiotics consisting of beneficial microorganisms, meanwhile, have the potential to delive...
New research clarifies how cells take in cholesterol and offers insight on Ebola
Cholesterol—that waxy substance incriminated in heart attack and stroke—is a precious commodity for cells. In fact, errors in a cell’s ability to import these rod-like molecules can be fatal. In new work, researchers at The Rockefeller University and their colleagues delved into a pivotal p...
A compound that stops cells from making protein factories could lead to new antifungal drugs
Tiny, abundant biological factories, known as ribosomes, produce the cell’s most fundamental building material: protein. If ribosomes don’t work, cells can’t divide—and this can be an advantage for scientists seeking to develop drugs that target invading organisms, such as pathogenic fungi. ...
Four Rockefeller scientists named 2016 HHMI Faculty Scholars
Four Rockefeller University scientists—Daniel Kronauer, Luciano Marraffini, Agata Smogorzewska, and Sohail Tavazoie—have been named Howard Hughes Medical Institute Faculty Scholars. The Faculty Scholars program, a new collaboration between HHMI, the Simons Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gate...
Scientists uncover a clever ranking strategy bacteria use to fight off viruses
Like humans, bacteria come under attack from viruses and rely on an immune system to defend themselves. A bacterial immune system known as CRISPR helps microbes “remember” the viruses they encounter and more easily fend them off in the future. Since researchers first discovered CRISPR in the mid...
Charles M. Rice wins Lasker Award for groundbreaking work on the hepatitis C virus
Charles M. Rice, Maurice R. and Corinne P. Greenberg Professor in Virology and head of the Laboratory of Virology and Infectious Disease, has been honored with the 2016 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, the country’s most prestigious science prize. Rice shares the award with Ralf F....
Four postdocs honored with 2016 Tri-Institutional Breakout Awards
NEW YORK, NY—Four young life scientists from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, The Rockefeller University, and Weill Cornell Medicine are the winners of the 2016 Tri-Institutional Breakout Awards for Junior Investigators. The awards, established last year by three winners of the 2013 Breakt...
New antibody drug continues to show promise for treatment of HIV
Great strides have been made in recent years to develop treatment options for HIV, and the disease can now be controlled with anti-retroviral drugs. But a cure remains elusive and current medications have limitations: they must be taken daily, for life, and can cause long-term complications. Now,...
Postdoc John Maciejowski wins 2016 Regeneron Prize for Creative Innovation
John Maciejowski, a postdoctoral fellow in Titia de Lange’s Laboratory of Cell Biology and Genetics, has received the 2016 Regeneron Prize for Creative Innovation. The award, given by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc., recognizes innovative young scientists based on proposals they submit that have ...
Michel C. Nussenzweig honored with the 2016 Robert Koch Award
Michel C. Nussenzweig, Zanvil A. Cohn and Ralph M. Steinman Professor and head of the Laboratory of Molecular Immunology, has won the 2016 Robert Koch Award. Nussenzweig will share the €100,000 prize, given by the Robert Koch Foundation of Germany, with Alberto Mantovani from Humanitas University...
Do artificial sweeteners live up to the promise of sweetness without harm? An ongoing clinical study investigates
There was a time when Thomas Huber, a molecular biologist at The Rockefeller University, was drinking about 36 ounces of diet cola a day. More than a year ago, Huber, a research assistant professor in Thomas P. Sakmar’s Laboratory of Chemical Biology and Signal Transduction, became curious about ...
New method gives scientists a better look at how HIV infects and takes over its host cells
Viruses attack cells and commandeer their machinery in a complex and carefully orchestrated invasion. Scientists have long probed this process for insights into biology and disease, but essential details still remain out of reach. A new approach, developed by a team of researchers led by The Rock...
35 labs and counting: How the Robertson Therapeutic Development Fund speeds translational research at Rockefeller
by Alexandra MacWade, assistant editor Developing a new medical product is a complex, high-risk endeavor. Of the thousands of clinically promising concepts scientists formulate each year, only a small fraction move beyond the lab. The Robertson TDF was created to advance work that has gone beyon...
Scientists find evidence that cancer can arise from changes in the proteins that package DNA
A mutation that affects the proteins that package DNA—without changing the DNA itself—can cause a rare form of cancer, according to new findings in this week’s Science from researchers at Rockefeller University. The mutation is present in histones, the protein scaffolding around which DNA w...
C. David Allis receives the 2016 Gruber Genetics Prize
C. David Allis, Joy and Jack Fishman Professor and head of the Laboratory of Chromatin Biology and Epigenetics, has won the 2016 Gruber Genetics Prize. He shares the $500,000 award with Michael Grunstein of the University of California, Los Angeles. The award, given by The Gruber Foundation, reco...
Antibody therapy opens door to potential new treatment for HIV
The development of antiretroviral therapy, a combination of drugs that slows the replication of HIV in the body, has transformed the treatment of this infection. What was once a certain death sentence is now a chronic condition that people can live with for decades. But this therapy has drawbacks...
A central clock runs the cell division cycle
Each time a cell divides, it replicates its DNA once, then separates the two copies from each other and splits into two daughter cells. The event is intricately coordinated and was long known to be under the influence of cyclins—an aptly named group of proteins whose levels go up and down as the ...
Nathaniel Heintz and Stanislas Leibler elected to the National Academy of Sciences
Nathaniel Heintz, James and Marilyn Simons Professor and head of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, and Stanislas Leibler, Gladys T. Perkin Professor and head of the Laboratory of Living Matter, have been elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. They are among 84 new national and 21 ne...
Charles Rice wins Belgium’s highest scientific prize
Charles M. Rice, Maurice R. and Corinne P. Greenberg Professor in Virology and head of the Laboratory of Virology and Infectious Disease, has been honored with the 2016 InBev-Baillet Latour Health Prize for his work on the hepatitis C virus. Queen Mathilde of Belgium presented Rice with the prize...
In the News - The New Yorker - Allis
Same but Different: How epigenetics can blur the line between nature and nurture "Allis walked me to his lab, a fluorescent-lit space overlooking the East River, divided by wide, polished-stone benches. A mechanical stirrer, whirring in a corner, clinked on the edge of a glass beaker. 'Two featur...
Mice engineered with rare kidney disease provide new insights about how cells repair broken DNA
Like jewels in a vault, our precious genetic material is stored in the nucleus of a cell—sequestered away from potentially damaging cellular components and toxins so that no harm can come to it. Yet over the course of a life moving through this world, our DNA does get damaged, and our cells have ...
A common brain cell shapes the nervous system in unexpected ways
More than half of our brains are made up of glial cells, which wrap around nerve fibers and insulate them—similarly to how the plastic casing of an electric cable insulates the copper wire within—allowing electrical and chemical impulses to travel faster. In the past, neuroscientists considered ...
A newly discovered way for cells to die
Some cells are meant to live, and some are meant to die. The linker cell of Caenorhabditis elegans, a tiny worm that is a favored model organism for biologists, is among those destined for termination. This cell helps determine the shape of the gonad in male worms—and then it dies, after two days...
Parasites reveal how evolution has molded an ancient nuclear structure
Long before animals evolved from sponges, and before plants evolved out of algae, there was a pivotal event that allowed complex, multicellular organisms to arise: the development of the nucleus in single-celled organisms. Eukaryotes, one of the three main branches of living organisms, are define...
Awards, arrivals, and promotions
Congratulations to our latest award winners: Cori Bargmann has won the 2016 Edward M. Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience, an award given by the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT to recognize outstanding advances in the field. She is being honored for her work on the genetic and neural mech...
A virus common among livestock depends on a microRNA to replicate
In the ongoing arms race between pathogenic viruses and the cells they infect, each side needs every advantage it can get. One way wily viruses can get a leg up is by subverting the microRNAs (miRNAs) of their host. These miRNAs are small stretches of RNA made by host cells to regulate gene expre...
Luciano Marraffini, among the first scientists to plumb the workings of the CRISPR-Cas system, is promoted to associate professor
by Diana Gitig, science writer Rockefeller University microbiologist Luciano Marraffini, head of the Laboratory of Bacteriology, has been promoted to associate professor. He studies the CRISPR-Cas system, which is part of an immune response that bacteria and some other microbes use to defend...
New research clarifies how stem cells get activated to produce new hair—and what happens when their regenerative powers wear out
Adult stem cells provide the body with a reservoir from which damaged or used up tissues can be replenished. In organs like the intestines and skin, which need constant rejuvenating, these stem cells are dividing frequently. But in other body structures, including the hair follicles, they are hel...
Luciano Marraffini, among the first scientists to plumb the workings of the CRISPR-Cas system, is promoted to associate professor
Rockefeller University microbiologist Luciano Marraffini, head of the Laboratory of Bacteriology, has been promoted to associate professor. He studies the CRISPR-Cas system, which is part of an immune response bacteria and some other microbes use to defend themselves against viruses known as phag...
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