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Science News

Under the microscope, strong-swimming swamp bacteria spontaneously organize into crystals

Insects form swarms, fish school, birds flock together. Likewise, one species of bacteria forms dynamic, living crystals, says new research from Rockefeller University. Biophysicists have revealed that fast-swimming, sulfur-eating microbes known as Thiovulum majus can organize themselves into a t...
Awards and Honors

The Rockefeller University designated a “Milestones in Microbiology” site by the American Society for Microbiology

The American Society for Microbiology (ASM) will name The Rockefeller University a “Milestones in Microbiology” site, recognizing the institution and its scientists for their significant contributions toward advancing the science of microbiology. The announcement will be made at a formal dedicat...

Intellectual property on pediatric cancer is dedicated to the public

Intellectual property resulting from the discovery of specific DNA mutations linked to a rare and often deadly type of adolescent liver cancer, fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma, has been dedicated to the public by the institutions that made the discovery, The Rockefeller University (“Rockef...
Awards and Honors

Rockefeller ranks first among global universities in several measures of scientific impact

In a new international comparison of universities, Rockefeller University dominates the rankings related to the impact of its research and the transfer of knowledge to the private sector. The rankings, released March 30 by the European Commission-funded U-Multirank survey, placed Rockefeller amon...

In the News - NPR - Casanova

A single gene may determine why some people get so sick with the flu "The study helps explain genetic variation changes the way that people fight off viruses. 'The response to influenza is genetically impaired,' says [Jean-Laurent] Casanova. He's hoping that the study will catch the interest of o...
Science News

Genetic mutation helps explain why, in rare cases, flu can kill

Nobody likes getting the flu, but for some people, fluids and rest aren’t enough. A small number of children who catch the influenza virus fall so ill they end up in the hospital — perhaps needing ventilators to breathe — even while their family and friends recover easily. New research by Roc...
Science News

To survive, a parasite mixes and matches its disguises, study suggests

Orchestrated costume changes make it possible for certain nasty microbes to outsmart the immune system, which would otherwise recognize them by the telltale proteins they wear. By taking the first detailed look at how one such parasite periodically assumes a new protein disguise during a long-ter...
Science News

Researchers master gene editing technique in mosquito that transmits deadly diseases

Traditionally, to understand how a gene functions, a scientist would breed an organism that lacks that gene — “knocking it out” — then ask how the organism has changed. Are its senses affected? Its behavior? Can it even survive? Thanks to the recent advance of gene editing technology, this ...

In the News - New York Times Dot Earth - Ausubel

Earth’s untallied biological bounty, from L.A. suburbs to deep seabed sediments  "Recent chats with Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University drew me this week to remarkable new discoveries of traces of life in sediment layers up to 200 feet beneath the South Pacific Ocean seabed that were long pre...
Science News

Chemical tag marks future microRNAs for processing, study shows

Just as two DNA strands naturally arrange themselves into a helix, DNA’s molecular cousin RNA can form hairpin-like loops. But unlike DNA, which has a single job, RNA can play many parts — including acting as a precursor for small molecules that block the activity of genes. These small RNA molec...
Science News

Changes in a blood-based molecular pathway identified in Alzheimer’s disease

By the time most people receive a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease — based on clinical signs of mental decline — their brains have already suffered a decade or more of damage. But although the mechanisms that spur the destruction of neurons in Alzheimer’s disease are not yet fully understood...
Science News

Scientists pinpoint molecule that controls stem cell plasticity by boosting gene expression

Stem cells can have a strong sense of identity. Taken out of their home in the hair follicle, for example, and grown in culture, these cells remain true to themselves. After waiting in limbo, these cultured cells become capable of regenerating follicles and other skin structures once transplanted...

In the News - Xconomy - Darnell

Six Takeaways From "New York’s Life Science Disruptors"  "Genomics is so daunting, it made New York institutions collaborate...The answers to so many questions are at scientists’ fingertips, but finding them is a huge undertaking. [Robert] Darnell’s lab at Rockefeller University, for instance...
Science News

New antibody therapy dramatically improves psoriasis symptoms in clinical trial

Many patients suffering from psoriasis showed significant recovery after just a single dose of an experimental treatment with a human antibody that blocks an immune signaling protein crucial to the disease, researchers report. By the end of the trial, conducted at Rockefeller University and seven...
Awards and Honors

Lewis Thomas Prize to honor mathematicians Steven Strogatz and Ian Stewart

Two mathematicians, Ian Stewart and Steven Strogatz, will share the 2015 Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science awarded by The Rockefeller University. Stewart, from The University of Warwick and Gresham College in the United Kingdom, and Strogatz, from Cornell, are the first mathematicians ...
Science News

Analysis of worm neurons suggests how a single stimulus can trigger different responses

Even worms have free will. If offered a delicious smell, for example, a roundworm will usually stop its wandering to investigate the source, but sometimes it won’t. Just as with humans, the same stimulus does not always provoke the same response, even from the same individual. New research at Roc...
Science News

Study details microRNA’s role as a double agent during Hep C infection

In the battle between a cell and a virus, either side may resort to subterfuge. Molecular messages, which control the cellular machinery both sides need, are vulnerable to interception or forgery. New research at Rockefeller University has revealed the unique twist on just such a strategy deploye...
Awards and Honors

Charles Gilbert to receive Scolnick Prize for visual perception work

Rockefeller’s Charles Gilbert, who studies visual perception, has won the 2015 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. The prize, announced yesterday, will be formally presented on...
Science News

Growth signal can influence cancer cells’ vulnerability to drugs, study suggests

In theory, a tumor is an army of clones, made up of many copies of the original cancerous cell. But tumor cells don’t always act like duplicates, and their unpredictable behavior can create problems for treatment. For while some cells within a tumor succumb to anti-cancer drugs, others may surviv...
Science News

Research captures transient details of HIV genome packaging

Once HIV-1 has hijacked a host cell to make copies of its own RNA genome and viral proteins, it must assemble these components into new virus particles. The orchestration of this intricate assembly process falls to a viral protein known as Gag. For one thing, Gag must be able to discern viral RNA...
Campus News

Announcements

Kids welcome. In celebration of national Take Your Child to Work Day, Human Resources will host activities for 8- to 12-year-olds from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on April 23. Children must be registered by April 17 and must be accompanied by an adult to attend. Space is limited. For more information, call ...
Campus News

Cardiologist Paul Cohen, expert in obesity and related diseases, named to faculty

More than one in three U.S. adults is obese, a condition that puts them at risk for an alarming array of health problems, from diabetes and heart disease to cancer. But while obesity brings devastating consequences for many, some escape. For a select few, obesity causes little more than sore join...
Campus News

Child and Family Center to expand by five rooms

by ZACH VEILLEUX The Rockefeller University Child and Family Center, long one of the university’s most coveted perks for parents and a model for work-site child care facilities nationwide, will expand by 40 percent this year, with five new classrooms to be constructed on the second floor of the G...
Campus News

New career director to help students and postdocs navigate options

by WYNNE PARRY Andrea Morris’s career in biology has had a few curves. After earning a Ph.D. in molecular biology and doing a postdoc, she took a tenure-track faculty job, teaching and running a lab at a small liberal arts college. But she ultimately gave up tenure, and the bench, to work in high...
Campus News

Two new Trustees are elected to Board

by WYNNE PARRY The university’s Board of Trustees elected two new members in October 2014: Weslie Janeway, a philanthropist with a long-standing interest in genetics, and Michael J. Price, an investment advisor specializing in the telecom and technology industries. With their elections, the unive...
Campus News

Rockefeller mathematician Peter Sellers dies at 84

by STEPHEN ALTSCHUL Peter H. Sellers, among the earliest researchers on DNA and protein sequence comparison, died of cancer on November 15, 2014, at the age of 84. An obituary was published in The Philadelphia Inquirer on November 25. Here, I offer a brief, personal perspective. I first met Pete...
Campus News

Richard Krause, former lab head and advocate for infectious disease research, dies

by WYNNE PARRY Richard M. Krause, a former Rockefeller University faculty member who later became director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and presciently warned against complacency toward infectious disease, has died at the age of 90. A fascination with the strep...
Campus News

‘Talking Science’ lecture moves to January

The university’s annual holiday lecture for high school students, a tradition dating back to 1960, received a makeover this year. In addition to a new name, “Talking Science,” which debuted in 2013, the lecture was moved to the second Saturday of January, and expanded to include a lunchtime pr...
Campus News

Milestones

Awarded: Mary Ellen Conley, the AAI-Steinman Award from the American Association of Immunologists. The award, named for the late Ralph M. Steinman, head of Rockefeller’s Laboratory of Cellular Physiology and Immunology, recognizes an individual who has made significant contributions to the unders...
Science News

Virus-cutting enzyme helps bacteria remember a threat

Bacteria may not have brains, but they do have memories, at least when it comes to viruses that attack them. Many bacteria have a molecular immune system which allows these microbes to capture and retain pieces of viral DNA that they have encountered in the past, in order to recognize and destroy...
Science News

Key to blocking influenza virus may lie in a cell’s own machinery

Viruses are masters of outsourcing, entrusting their fundamental function – reproduction – to the host cells they infect. But it turns out this highly economical approach also creates vulnerability. Researchers at Rockefeller University and their collaborators have found an unexpected way the...
Science News

Drug-resistant bacteria lurk in subway stations, high school students discover

Forget the five-million plus commuters and untold number of rats – many of the living things crowded into the New York City subway system are too small to see. An interest in the more menacing among these microbes led high school student Anya Dunaif, a participant in Rockefeller’s Summer Science...

In the News - Popular Science - Bargmann

Meet a neurologist who’s mapping the human brain   "In the past century of neuroscience, there’s been a lot of analysis of individual neurons and synapses, and, more recently, imaging of the whole brain. But we scientists think everything of substance happens in between these two scales. It’...
Awards and Honors

Jeffrey Ravetch wins Wolf Prize in Medicine

Jeffrey V. Ravetch, head of the Leonard Wagner Laboratory of Molecular Genetics and Immunology at Rockefeller University, was named a recipient of the 2015 Wolf Prize in Medicine on Friday (January 30) and will receive the award at a ceremony in Tel Aviv in May. He shares the prize, which include...

In the News - GlobeAndMail - Nussenzweig

HIV: Latent reservoir of virus in rare immune cells could help develop cure "Research at Rockefeller University suggests that a quiet body of immune cells that do not divide could harbour a reserve of HIV virus, a potential target for therapies aimed at curing rather than managing the disease."
Science News

Latent HIV may lurk in ‘quiet’ immune cells, research suggests

Drugs for HIV have become adept at suppressing infection, but they still can’t eliminate it. That’s because the medication in these pills doesn’t touch the virus’ hidden reserves, which lie dormant within infected white blood cells. Unlock the secrets of this pool of latent virus, scientists...

In the News - Huffington Post - Kreek

Dying to be free: The treatment for heroin addiction we aren’t using   “[Opiate addiction] 'alters multiple regions in the brain,' [Mary Jeanne] Kreek said, 'including those that regulate reward, memory and learning, stress responsivity, and hormonal response, as well as executive function whic...
Science News

Research implicates metabolic process of the liver in the spread of colorectal cancer

Colorectal cancer is a cancer on the move: about 50 percent of patients with the disease see their cancer spread, typically to the liver. By identifying genes that become activated in cancer cells that successfully travel — metastasize — to the liver, researchers at Rockefeller have implicated...
Science News

Study detailing axonal death pathway may provide drug targets for neurodegenerative diseases

Axons connect neurons with each other to form the neural networks that underpin the vital functions of perception, motility, cognition, and memory. In many neurodegenerative disorders, from traumatic injury or toxic damage to diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease, axonal degenerati...

In the News - BBC News - Brady

Drugs in dirt: Scientists appeal for help "Dr. [Sean] Brady, head of the Laboratory of Genetically Encoded Small Molecules, said: 'We hope that efforts to map nature's microbial and chemical diversity will result in the discovery of both completely new medicines and better versions of existing me...
Campus News

Cancer biologist and physician Sohail Tavazoie is promoted to associate professor

Sohail Tavazoie, head of the Elizabeth and Vincent Meyer Laboratory of Systems Cancer Biology, has been promoted to associate professor, effective January 1. Tavazoie, who joined Rockefeller in 2009, works to understand how cancer cells become able to escape a tumor and invade other organs, a pro...
Science News

Long-acting drug effectively prevents HIV-like infection in monkeys

A regime of anti-HIV drugs — components of regimens to treat established HIV infection — has the potential to protect against infection in the first place. But real life can interfere; the effectiveness of this prophylactic approach declines if the medications aren’t taken as prescribed. ...
Campus News

Physician scientist, interested in obesity-related disease, to join faculty

More than one in three U.S. adults is obese, a condition that puts them at risk for an alarming array of health problems, from diabetes and heart disease to cancer. But while obesity brings devastating consequences for many, some escape. For a select few, obesity causes little more than sore join...
Science News

Facial motion activates a dedicated network within the brain, research shows

A face is more than a static collection of features. A shift in gaze, a tightening of the lips, a tilt of the head, these movements convey important clues to someone’s state of mind. Scientists know that two particularly social and visual creatures, humans and rhesus macaque monkeys, have a netwo...

In the News - The Telegraph - McEwen

'Senior moments' could be coming to an end "Professor Bruce McEwen, of The Rockefeller University, New York, said: 'By examining the neurological changes that occurred after Riluzole treatment, we discovered one way in which the brain's ability to reorganise itself, its neuroplasticity, can be ma...
Awards and Honors

Jeffrey M. Friedman and Leslie B. Vosshall named 2014 AAAS Fellows

Rockefeller University scientists Jeffrey M. Friedman and Leslie B. Vosshall have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as a fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers for scientifically or socially distinguished efforts...

In the News - WSJ - Greengard

The mind and its mysteries   "'We do know from my own work on depression that there seems to be several different parts of the brain involved [in creativity]. Different parts of the brain are all speaking to each other. We’re trying to figure out how they’re speaking to each other.' [Dr. Green...
Science News

New research suggests an existing drug, riluzole, may prevent foggy ‘old age’ brain

Forgetfulness, it turns out, is all in the head. Scientists have shown that fading memory and clouding judgment, the type that comes with advancing age, show up as lost and altered connections between neurons in the brain. But new experiments suggest an existing drug, known as riluzole and alread...
Science News

‘Radiogenetics’ seeks to remotely control cells and genes

It’s the most basic of ways to find out what something does, whether it’s an unmarked circuit breaker or an unidentified gene — flip its switch and see what happens. New remote-control technology may offer biologists a powerful way to do this with cells and genes. A team at Rockefeller Univers...
Science News

Discovery links shift in metabolism to stem cell renewal

Stem cells in early embryos have unlimited potential; they can become any type of cell, and researchers hope to one day harness this rejuvenating power to heal disease and injury. To do so, they must, among other things, figure out how to reliably arrest stem cells in a Peter Pan-like state of in...

Rockefeller University Hospital shares $2.8 million contract to study preventing drug-resistant infections in the community

A collaborative research team at The Rockefeller University Center for Clinical and Translational Science and Clinical Directors Network has received a $2.8 million contract award from a nonprofit organization to study a home-based intervention to prevent recurrence of a community-acquired drug-r...
Science News

Atomic-level view provides new insight into translation of touch into nerve signals

Whether stubbing a toe or stroking a cat, the sensation of touch starts out as a mechanical force that is then transformed into an electrical signal conveying pain or other sensations. Tiny channels in neurons act as translators by helping to formulate that signal to the brain. However, scientist...
Awards and Honors

Marc Tessier-Lavigne receives lifetime achievement award from biotech executives

A group of chief executive officers from leading biotechnology companies has presented Marc Tessier-Lavigne, Rockefeller’s president, with a Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his leadership in the bioscience community. The award was announced at a Boston Biotech Conference of executive...
Campus News

$150 million from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and David Rockefeller launches major campus extension

Marc Tessier-Lavigne, president of The Rockefeller University, today announced two leadership pledges of $75 million each from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and David Rockefeller to launch a major extension of the University’s campus on the East River. Dr. Tessier-Lavigne said, “These pledg...
Campus News

Announcements

Tri-I TDI makes modeling software available. The Tri-Institutional Therapeutics Discovery Institute, Inc. (Tri-I TDI) has signed an agreement to provide access to Schrödinger’s materials science, biologics and small‑molecule drug discovery suites to researchers within Tri-I TDI’s member insti...
Campus News

Geneticist Joe Gleeson joins faculty as professor

by WYNNE PARRY Joseph Gleeson, a neurogeneticist who uses genetic sequencing to identify the causes of pediatric brain disease across its spectrum, including epilepsy, autism, intellectual disability and structural disorders, has joined Rockefeller as a professor and established the Laboratory of...
Campus News

Tenure awarded to Hiro Funabiki

by WYNNE PARRY Hironori Funabiki, head of the Laboratory of Chromosome and Cell Biology, was promoted to professor and granted tenure by the university’s Board of Trustees at its June meeting. Dr. Funabiki studies mitosis, the primary type of cell division that underlies all growth, maintenance a...
Campus News

New cryo-EM suite expands Rockefeller’s capabilities in structural biology

by ZACH VEILLEUX Structural biology, in which scientists examine the shapes of specific proteins and protein complexes at a molecular scale, has driven some of biology’s most profound discoveries in the past decade, including insights into neurological signaling, pathogenic processes and DNA tran...
Campus News

Playing doctors: Tri-Institutional Music and Medicine Program features physicians and scientists who also perform music

by LESLIE CHURCH Maybe it’s the fact that they both involve a good amount of discipline, or maybe it’s that each requires a certain flair for creative thought. Whatever the reason, many people find themselves drawn to both music and science, and are often faced with the difficult decision of cho...
Campus News

Science communicator named new head of Public Affairs

by WYNNE PARRY An endless stream of compelling discoveries emerges regularly from Rockefeller’s research community and it is the job of the Office of Communications and Public Affairs to make sure those findings are accessible internally and externally. The new executive director of the office, F...
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