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Awards and Honors

Jean-Laurent Casanova honored with 2014 Sanofi-Institut Pasteur Award

Jean-Laurent Casanova, professor and head of the St. Giles Laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Diseases at The Rockefeller University, has been named a 2014 Sanofi-Institut Pasteur Award winner for his paradigm-shifting discovery of the role of single-gene mutations in infectious diseases,...
Science News

Small RNAs in blood may reveal heart injury

Like clues to a crime, specific molecules in the body can hint at exposure to toxins, infectious agents or even trauma, and so help doctors determine whether and how to treat a patient. In recent years, tiny pieces of RNA called microRNAs have captured scientific attention for their potential as ...

Medical innovation requires federal support and structural improvements, Marc Tessier-Lavigne tells members of Congress

Two distinct but complementary types of research produce medical innovation: basic science in academic labs and applied work by private sector companies, Rockefeller President Marc Tessier-Lavigne told members of a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on July 17. Increased federal funding f...
Science News

Discovery of pro-metastasis protein reveals mysterious link to neurodegeneration

Researchers have identified a protein that makes breast cancer cells more likely to metastasize. What's more, the protein appears to trigger cancer's spread in part by blocking two other proteins normally linked to neurodegeneration, a finding that suggests a tie between two of the most common di...

In the News - WSJ - 7/28/14

Wanted: Biotech Startups in New York City   "A lot of the legal and commercial groundwork has been established between Accelerator and its partner institutions, which should help speed the business-development process, said Marc Tessier-Lavigne, president of Rockefeller University."

In the News

Peter Marler, Graphic Decoder of Birdsong, Dies at 86   “Dr. Marler was one of the first ethologists to produce graphic snapshots of birdsong — streaks of ink on paper, like an electrocardiogram, showing the wave-frequency, modulation and pitch of various calls and songs. From that data, Dr. ...
Science News

Researchers create the first model of the DNA ‘replication fork’

Human cells make new copies of their DNA billions of times each day, a crucial process upon which life itself depends. However, scientists do not fully understand how cells unzip the double-stranded DNA molecule before replicating both halves of it. New work at Rockefeller may help change that. F...

Nat Immunol 2014 Jul 21

Nature Immunology online: July 21, 2014 Type I and type II Fc receptors regulate innate and adaptive immunity Andrew Pincetic, Stylianos Bournazos, David J DiLillo, Jad Maamary, Taia T. Wang, Rony Dahan, Benjamin-Maximillian Fiebiger and Jeffrey V. Ravetch

Cell 158, 300–313

Cell 158, 300–313 Crosstalk between Muscularis Macrophages and Enteric Neurons Regulates Gastrointestinal Motility Paul Andrew Muller, Balázs Koscsó, Gaurav Manohar Rajani, Korey Stevanovic, Marie-Luise Berres, Daigo Hashimoto, Arthur Mortha, Marylene Leboeuf, Xiu-Min Li, Daniel Mucida, E. Richa...

In the News 7/16/14

Dialing Back Stress With A Bubble Bath, Beach Trip And Bees   "Stress raises our heart rate and ramps our immune systems to prepare for injury and danger. 'The problem is if we don't turn those responses off efficiently when the danger is over ... they can cause damage,' [Bruce] McEwen says."
Campus News

New faculty member uses genetic sequencing to investigate childhood brain disease

Joseph Gleeson, a neurogeneticist who hunts down genes responsible for devastating neurodevelopmental disorders, has joined The Rockefeller University and has established the Laboratory of Pediatric Brain Diseases. Gleeson, formerly a professor at the University of California, San Diego, is one o...

Nature Cell Biology online July 13, 2014

Nature Cell Biology online July 13, 2014 Par3-mInsc and Gαi3 cooperate to promote oriented epidermal cell divisions through LGN Scott E. Williams, Lyndsay A. Ratliff, Maria Pia Postiglione, Juergen A. Knoblich and Elaine Fuchs

In the News - Ars Technica - 7/11/14

3D printing used to control stem cell differentiation   Scientists from the Laboratory of Stem Cell Biology and Molecular Embryology at Rockefeller University are using principles from geometry to control the patterns through which [human embryonic stem cells] develop.

In the News - Daily Mail UK - Tavazoie

How spread of breast cancer could be stopped "Professor Sohail Tavazoie, who led the research, said: ‘If we learn more about how this regulation works, we may in the future be able to generate drugs that prevent this protein from triggering metastatic disease.’"

In the News

Scientists Join the World of Crowdfunding   “'But science has yet to gain Veronica Mars status,' notes Jeanne Garbarino, director of science outreach at Rockefeller University in New York, who has used crowdfunding and informally advised others. Instead, scientific projects tend to be far more ...

Nature online: July 9, 2014

Nature online: July 9, 2014 Metastasis-suppressor transcript destabilization through TARBP2 binding of mRNA hairpins | Newswire Hani Goodarzi, Steven Zhang, Colin G. Buss, Lisa Fish, Saeed Tavazoie and Sohail F. Tavazoie
Science News

Genetically driven gut feelings help female flies choose a mate

Even among flies, mating is a complicated ritual. Their elaborate, and entirely innate, courtship dance combines multiple motor skills with advanced sensory cues. Now, researchers at Rockefeller University have determined that the Abdominal-B (Abd-B) gene, previously known as the gene that sculpt...

Impaired TrkB Receptor Signaling Underlies Corticostriatal Dysfunction in Huntington's Disease

Neuron 83(1):178-88 Impaired TrkB Receptor Signaling Underlies Corticostriatal Dysfunction in Huntington's Disease Joshua L. Plotkin, Michelle Day, Jamys D. Peterson, Zhong Xie, Geraldine J. Kress, Igor Rafalovich, Jyothisri Kondapalli, Tracy S. Gertler, Marc Flajolet, Paul Greengard, Mihaela Sta...
Science News

Using geometry, researchers coax human embryonic stem cells to organize themselves

About seven days after conception, something remarkable occurs in the clump of cells that will eventually become a new human being. They start to specialize. They take on characteristics that begin to hint at their ultimate fate as part of the skin, brain, muscle or any of the roughly 200 cell ty...
Science News

Potential Alzheimer’s drug prevents abnormal blood clots in the brain

Without a steady supply of blood, neurons can’t work. That’s why one of the culprits behind Alzheimer’s disease is believed to be the persistent blood clots that often form in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, contributing to the condition’s hallmark memory loss, confusion and cognitive ...
Science News

Sequencing efforts miss DNA crucial to bacteria’s disease causing power

Genomic sequencing is supposed to reveal the entire genetic makeup of an organism. For infectious disease specialists, the technology can be used to analyze a disease-causing bacterium to determine how much harm it is capable of causing and whether or not it will be resistant to antibiotics. But ...
Awards and Honors

Jean-Laurent Casanova to receive 2014 Robert Koch Award

Jean-Laurent Casanova, head of the St. Giles Laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Diseases, has been awarded the 2014 Robert Koch Award from the Berlin, Germany based Robert Koch Foundation. Casanova shares the prize with Alain Fischer from the Collège de France and Imagine Institute and th...

The kinesin-4 protein Kif7 regulates mammalian Hedgehog signalling by organizing the cilium tip compartment (June 22, 2014)

Nature Cell Biology online: June 22, 2014 The kinesin-4 protein Kif7 regulates mammalian Hedgehog signalling by organizing the cilium tip compartment Mu He, Radhika Subramanian, Fiona Bangs, Tatiana Omelchenko, Karel F. Liem Jr, Tarun M. Kapoor & Kathryn V. Anderson

Science 344, 1401-1405

Science 344, 1401-1405 | Newswire HIV-1–induced AIDS in monkeys Theodora Hatziioannou,Gregory Q. Del Prete, Brandon F. Keele, Jacob D. Estes, Matthew W. McNatt, Julia Bitzegeio, Alice Raymond, Anthony Rodriguez, Fabian Schmidt, C. Mac Trubey, Jeremy Smedley, Michael Piatak Jr., Vineet N. KewalRam...
Science News

New monkey model for AIDS offers promise for medical research

HIV-1, the virus responsible for most cases of AIDS, is a very selective virus. It does not readily infect species other than its usual hosts — humans and chimpanzees. While this would qualify as good news for most mammals, for humans this fact has made the search for effective treatments and vac...
Campus News

Structural biologist, focused on cell transport machinery, to join faculty

Jue Chen, a structural biologist whose research focuses on transporter proteins that act as the cell’s pumping machinery, will join The Rockefeller University as professor and head of laboratory in July. Chen, currently a tenured professor of biology at Purdue University in Indiana and a Howard H...

Netrin-1 controls sympathetic arterial innervation

Journal of Clinical Investigation online: June 15, 2014 Netrin-1 controls sympathetic arterial innervation Isabelle Brunet, Emma Gordon, Jinah Han, Brunella Cristofaro, Dong Broqueres-You, Chun Liu, Karine Bouvrée, Jiasheng Zhang, Raquel del Toro, Thomas Mathivet, Bruno Larrivée, Julia Jagu, Laur...

DrugTargetSeqR: a genomics- and CRISPR-Cas9-based method to analyze drug targets

Nature Chemical Biology online: June 15, 2014 DrugTargetSeqR: a genomics- and CRISPR-Cas9-based method to analyze drug targets Corynn Kasap, Olivier Elemento and Tarun M. Kapoor
Campus News

Structural biologist, focused on cell transport machinery, to join faculty

by WYNNE PARRY Jue Chen, a structural biologist whose research focuses on transporter proteins that act as the cell’s pumping machinery, will join Rockefeller as professor and head of laboratory in July. Dr. Chen, currently a tenured professor of biology at Purdue University in Indiana, is especi...
Campus News

Drug discovery fund begins making grants

by LESLIE CHURCH A new $25 million initiative, created earlier this academic year to help develop basic research discoveries into new medical therapies, has had a promising launch, with $1.55 million in awards granted to Rockefeller scientists in its initial phase. The first awards are for proof-...
Campus News

Inaugural ‘Science Saturday’ draws families

Watch and learn. An attendee of Rockefeller’s Science Saturday event, held in May, looks on as A. James Hudspeth, F.M. Kirby Professor and head of the Laboratory of Sensory Neuroscience, demonstrates how nerve cells send electrical signals. Jointly hosted by the Development Office’s Parents & Sc...
Campus News

Tri-I drug discovery institute soon to announce first projects

by LESLIE CHURCH The Tri-Institutional Therapeutics Discovery Institute (Tri-I TDI), an initiative with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medical College begun last fall to help expedite early-stage drug discovery, will announce this month the first projects it has selected...
Campus News

IT amps up bandwidth, eases genomic data transfers

by LESLIE CHURCH For labs on campus that sequence genomes — and share those large data sets with other institutions — a recent quadrupling in internet bandwidth means an end to the practice of slowing down uploads or scheduling them during overnight hours. In April the university upgraded its i...
Campus News

Surgeon and writer Atul Gawande awarded Lewis Thomas Prize

by LESLIE CHURCH Among the limits of modern medicine is the element of human error. Atul Gawande, surgeon, professor, writer and public health researcher, reminds us that doctors make mistakes. But as an advocate for reducing error and increasing efficiency in health care, he also wants to help t...
Campus News

Nobel laureate and longtime faculty member Gerald Edelman dies at 84

by LESLIE CHURCH Gerald M. Edelman, a Rockefeller alumnus, former faculty member and Nobel laureate who uncovered the chemical structure of the antibody in 1961, died on May 18 at the age of 84. A graduate of Henry Kunkel’s laboratory and a member of the university’s second graduating class, D...
Campus News

Milestones

Awarded: C. David Allis, the 2014 Japan Prize in Life Sciences from the Japan Prize Foundation, for his pioneering work in epigenetics and his discovery that chemical modifications of DNA-packaging proteins play a key role in regulating the activity of individual genes. The prize, worth approxima...
Campus News

Twenty-four students receive Ph.D.s at Rockefeller’s 56th Convocation

The Rockefeller University awarded doctoral degrees to 24 students at its convocation ceremony today. Additionally, the university awarded three honorary degrees, to John Gurdon, Julian Robertson and Sinya Yamanaka. Gurdon and Yamanaka are 2012 Nobel Prize laureates known for discoveries related ...
Science News

To recover consciousness, brain activity passes through newly detected states

Anesthesia makes otherwise painful procedures possible by derailing a conscious brain, rendering it incapable of sensing or responding to a surgeon’s knife. But little research exists on what happens when the drugs wear off. “I always found it remarkable that someone can recover from anesthesia...

In the News

Obama N.I.H. Seeks $4.5 Billion to Try to Crack the Code of How Brains Function   "The report, from a committee led by Cori Bargmann of Rockefeller University and William Newsome of Stanford University, emphasizes technology development for the first five years, and use of the new technology in ...
Awards and Honors

Daniel Schramek awarded Regeneron Prize for Creative Innovation by a Postdoctoral Fellow

Daniel Schramek, a postdoctoral fellow in Elaine Fuchs’s Laboratory of Mammalian Cell Biology and Development, has received the Regeneron Prize for Creative Innovation from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. The national award, in its second year, is given to one postdoc and one graduate student ann...
Science News

Research details how developing neurons sense a chemical cue

Symmetry is an inherent part of development. As an embryo, an organism’s brain and spinal cord, like the rest of its body, organize themselves into left and right halves as they grow. But a certain set of nerve cells do something unusual: they cross from one side to the other. New research in mic...

Science online: May 29, 2014

Science online: May 29, 2014 Structures of netrin-1 bound to two receptors provide insight into its axon guidance mechanism Kai Xu, Zhuhao Wu, Nicolas Renier, Alexander Antipenko, Dorothea Tzvetkova-Robev, Yan Xu, Maria Minchenko, Vincenzo Nardi-Dei, Kanagalaghatta R. Rajashankar, Juha Himanen, M...

Nature 509: 637–640 (14-5-29)

Nature 509: 637–640 Clonal selection in the germinal centre by regulated proliferation and hypermutation Alexander D. Gitlin, Ziv Shulman and Michel C. Nussenzweig

In the News

Obama Meets 18-Year-Old Cancer Researcher, Among Other Science-Fair Achievers   "President Barack Obama lauded whiz kids at the White House Science Fair on Tuesday, including Elana Simon [daughter of Sanford Simon], an 18-year-old who helped research a rare liver cancer that she was diagnosed wit...

Cell 157: 1230-1242 (14-5-22)

Cell 157: 1230-1242 Molecular profiling of neurons based on connectivity Mats I. Ekstrand, Alexander R. Nectow, Zachary A. Knight, Kaamashri N. Latcha, Lisa E. Pomeranz and Jeffrey M. Friedman
Science News

Researchers profile active genes in neurons based on connections

When it comes to the brain, wiring isn’t everything. Although neurobiologists often talk in electrical metaphors, the reality is that the brain is not nearly as simple as a series of wires and circuits. Unlike their copper counterparts, neurons can behave differently depending on the situation. R...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 111: 7325-7330 (14-05-20)

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 111: 7325-7330 Histone variant H3.3 is an essential maternal factor for oocyte reprogramming Duancheng Wen, Laura A. Banaszynski, Ying Liu, Fuqiang Geng, Kyung-Min Noh, Jenny Xiang, Olivier Elemento, Zev Rosenwaks, C. David Allis and Shahin Rafii

In the News

Hacking the mind: How to harness the power of the body's greatest tool   "Ultimately, the neuroscience experts concluded, for all the research and progress that’s been done about the brain and its many powers, there’s still a far way to go. 'It's like the space program except it's inner-space ...
Science News

Searching for drugs in dirt, researchers call on citizen scientists

Microbes are not only a rich source of disease, but also a rich source of medicines, and experts think many life-saving compounds produced by as-yet-unnamed bacteria are awaiting discovery. But they don’t always give up their secrets easily. Researchers must know where to look to find promising b...
Campus News

Rockefeller ranks first in scientific impact among list of global institutions

The Rockefeller University has the highest percentage of frequently cited scientific publications of 750 top universities worldwide, according to the CWTS Leiden Ranking, which measures citation impact and scientific collaboration. The ranking, conducted by the Center for Science and Technology S...
Campus News

NY City Council approves new Rockefeller laboratory building

The Rockefeller University’s proposal to build a two-story, 160,000 square foot building over the FDR Drive adjacent to its campus passed an important milestone today with the City Council’s vote to approve the plan. The project now awaits final approval by the mayor following a five-day review ...

Journal of Experimental Medicine online: May 12, 2014

Journal of Experimental Medicine online: May 12, 2014 A novel Aβ-fibrinogen interaction inhibitor rescues altered thrombosis and cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease mice Hyung Jin Ahn, J. Fraser Glickman, Ka Lai Poon, Daria  Zamolodchikov, Odella C. Jno-Charles, Erin H. Norris and Sidney Str...
Awards and Honors

Tri-Institutional Breakthrough Prize winners establish new award for postdocs

Three winners of the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, Charles L. Sawyers of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Cornelia I. Bargmann of the Rockefeller University and Lewis C. Cantley of Weill Cornell Medical College, have used a portion of their awards to establish a new annua...

Journal of Experimental Medicine 211(6):1049-62

Journal of Experimental Medicine 211(6):1049-62 A novel Aβ-fibrinogen interaction inhibitor rescues altered thrombosis and cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease mice Hyung Jin Ahn, J. Fraser Glickman, Ka Lai Poon, Daria Zamolodchikov, Odella C. Jno-Charles, Erin H. Norris and Sidney Strickland

Cell 157: 935-949 (14-5-8)

Cell 157: 935-949 Transit-amplifying cells orchestrate stem cell activity and tissue regeneration Ya-Chieh Hsu, Lishi Li and Elaine Fuchs  
Science News

Stem cell progeny tell their parents when to turn on

Stem cells switch off and on, sometimes dividing to produce progeny cells and sometimes resting. But scientists don’t fully understand what causes the cells to toggle between active and quiet states. New research in Elaine Fuchs’ Laboratory of Mammalian Cell Biology and Development focused on s...

Neuron 82: 682-694 (14-5-7)

Neuron 82: 682-694 Incremental integration of global contours through interplay between visual cortical areas Minggui Chen, Yin Yan, Xiajing Gong, Charles D. Gilbert, Hualou Liang and Wu Li
Science News

Discovery helps explain how B cells adapt to their targets

Over the weeks following an invasion by a disease-causing microbe, the human immune system fine tunes its defenses, producing proteins called antibodies that are ever more precisely targeted at the invader. New research in Michel Nussenzweig’s Laboratory of Molecular Immunology helps explain how ...
Awards and Honors

Robert Darnell elected to National Academy of Sciences

Robert B. Darnell, Robert and Harriet Heilbrunn Professor and head of the Laboratory of Molecular Neuro-oncology, has been named a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Darnell is one of 84 newly elected members announced today by the Academy; an additional 21 foreign associates from 15 cou...

In the news

This land is your land   "Food, [Jesse Ausubel] told me, is a little like clothing. 'There are large companies that turn out the blue jeans and T-shirts we all wear. We don't mind large scale for that. But sometimes we all want a little something nicer, a little more fashionable. Even people with...
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