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Milestones
Awarded: Pradeep Kumar, a Keck Futures Initiative grant from the National Academies. The grant, for $25,000, will fund a project titled “Interaction of Complex Biomolecules with a Complex Liquid: Role of Water in Biology.” Dr. Kumar is a fellow of the Center for Studies in Physics and Biology. ...
New Rockefeller faculty member studies mechanisms of DNA repair
Agata Smogorzewska, a physician-scientist whose research focuses on DNA repair and on the molecular basis of Fanconi anemia, a genomic instability syndrome that leads to leukemia and other forms of cancer, has been named assistant professor and will join The Rockefeller University as head of the ...
To spread, skin cancer attacks immune dendritic cells
Dendritic cells are the sentinels of the immune system. When they’re alert and on guard, they will marshal the body’s immunosoldiers, T cells, to battle at the sight of harmful pathogens. But some diseases, such as cancer, are able to escape their watchful eye. By knocking out or beguiling dendr...
Rockefeller University names Robert Sapolsky 2008 Lewis Thomas Prize winner
Primatologist and Stanford University neuroscientist Robert M. Sapolsky has been named the recipient of Rockefeller University’s Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science for 2008. The award recognizes Sapolsky’s 2001 publication A Primate’s Memoir: A Neuroscientist’s Unconventional Life...
For different species, different functions for embryonic microRNAs
When evolution has lucked into efficient solutions for life’s most fundamental problems, it adopts them as invaluable family heirlooms, passing them down as one species evolves into another. So it was reasonable to expect that a key regulator of embryonic development — a strand of RNA that sheph...
Scientists develop a tool to study deadly parasite's histone code
n the Japanese art of paper folding, a series of folds can make the same sheet of paper into a ballerina or baby elephant. But try unfolding the baby elephant and making it into a ballerina. It’s like trying to make a neuron from a kidney cell. Epigenetics, it turns out, isn’t much different fro...
New tag could enable more detailed structural studies of mammalian proteins
To say our genes are resourceful is a gross understatement. Through ingenious combinations of a paltry 20 amino acids, the basic building blocks of life, genes engineer all of the tissues and organs that are the marvel of our working bodies. Now scientists are adding to the parsimonious genetic r...
Eric Siggia joins National Academy of Sciences
Eric D. Siggia, whose laboratory is interested in applying informatics approaches to study gene expression and other biological problems, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors given to a scientist or engineer in the United States. Siggia, who is professor...
New sequencing technique to prod benefits from killer venom
King Kong toxin, a component of the venom in some poisonous marine snails, has a peculiar power to go with its peculiar name. When injected into a meek little lobster in a tank full of superiors, the poison induces delusions of grandeur; the little guy starts marching around like he’s king of the...
New clinical study probes how light fights psoriasis
Ultraviolet light is a proven treatment for psoriasis, one of humanity’s oldest known diseases. Sunshine can also beat back the chronic autoimmune disorder of the skin. But explaining light’s therapeutic effects has been difficult. “We know it works, but we want to know how,” says Michelle L...
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