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Mice on Prozac help scientists find better depression treatments
Depressed mice, like depressed humans, often appear listless and antisocial — the result of aberrant levels of brain chemicals such as serotonin. The most commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs, Prozac and other drugs of its class, act to normalize levels of serotonin. But by comparing mice tha...
Jeffrey Ravetch to receive William B. Coley Award
The 2007 William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic and Tumor Immunology has been awarded to Jeffrey V. Ravetch, head of Rockefeller University’s Leonard Wagner Laboratory of Molecular Genetics and Immunology. The Cancer Research Institute, which administers the prize, chose Ravet...
New study reveals inner workings of a molecular clamp critical to DNA replication
From bacteria to humans, every organism must replicate its DNA. This basic process, which occurs millions of times a day in an average mammal, is driven by three core protein complexes that act as tiny machines, zipping along an unwound strand of DNA to assemble a duplicate copy. New research fro...
David Allis to receive Gairdner Award
C. David Allis, Joy and Jack Fishman Professor at Rockefeller University, is a recipient of the 2007 Gairdner Foundation International Awards. Allis is one of five scientists honored by the Gairdner Foundation for “fundamental discoveries that will have impact on human genetic development, cancer...
Building the nuclear pore piece by piece
The nuclear pore complexes are the sole gatekeepers for the cell’s nucleus — proteins, RNA, viruses, anything that passes between the nucleus and the rest of the cell has to use one of these giant protein assemblies. But exactly how each of the almost 2,000 pores that are embedded in the nuclear...
Dendritic cells may be key to reversing diabetes
When the body’s own immune system begins to assault the cells in the pancreas responsible for producing insulin, the result is type 1 diabetes. Now, researchers studying the immune system’s dendritic cells in mice have found a way to stop the destruction and help revive and maintain the populati...
Density does it: Fibrinogen concentration controls clot formation
When blood clots over a wound, the resulting scab is the product of an intricate molecular dance between cell fragments called platelets in the blood and the glycoprotein fibrinogen. Fibrinogen sticks to the wound's surface, and when platelets float by the fibrinogen it turns on a receptor on the...
To recognize their friends, mice use their amygdalas
Even those who can’t remember names can usually recall faces. New research from Rockefeller University suggests that a simple brain chemical, a neuropeptide called oxytocin, is a reason. Social recognition is an important part of normal life for animals of every species. “Remembering an individ...
Hepatitis C virus blocks 'superinfection'
There’s infection and then there’s superinfection – when a cell already infected by a virus gets a second viral infection. But some viruses don’t like to share their cells. New research from Rockefeller University shows that the hepatitis C virus, which infects cells in the liver and can cau...
Understanding ubiquitylation: Researchers identify a process that enables access to genes
It turns out there’s more than one way to skin a gene. New research from Rockefeller University suggests that two closely related DNA unpackaging mechanisms may not work the way scientists thought. Access to a gene requires a host of proteins to work in tandem to pry open DNA’s protective chrom...
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