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Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Mary Hynes donate Ursula von Rydingsvard sculpture to university’s art collection

The former Rockefeller president and his wife made the gift to express their thanks to the university community. The dramatic cedar sculpture, called Plate with Dots, was installed earlier this month in the Abby Lounge.

New structural studies reveal workings of a molecular pump that ejects cancer drugs

Sometimes cells resist medication by spitting it back out. Cancer cells, in particular, have a reputation for defiantly expelling the chemotherapy drugs meant to kill them. Researchers at The Rockefeller University have shed new light on a molecular pump that makes this possible, by determining i...

Rockefeller’s redesigned website set to launch in March

It has been more than a decade since Rockefeller’s most prominent public face received a major overhaul. That’s set to change next month, when the initial phase of a reimagined and redesigned rockefeller.edu launches. The new external site, which has taken two years to carefully plan and rebuild...

New research explains why a common bacterium can produce severe illness

As much as we try to avoid it, ­we are constantly sharing germs with those around us. But even when two people have the same infection, the resulting illnesses can be dramatically different—mild for one person, severe or even life-threatening for the other. Now, new research from The Rockefell...

Talking Science lecture introduces students to the genetic aspects of infectious diseases

As he opened this year’s Talking Science lecture, geneticist Jean-Laurent Casanova made a stark observation to his teenage audience: “If we had been here 150 years ago, about half of you would already have died.” The primary reason, he told the 350 high school students and 60 teachers present,...

Oceanographer and explorer Sylvia Earle will receive the 2017 Lewis Thomas Prize

Oceanographer, explorer, and author Sylvia Earle has been named the recipient of this year’s Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science. The award, given annually by Rockefeller University, recognizes Earle’s body of work, which includes memoirs, atlases, and children’s books, as well as adv...

Jeffrey V. Ravetch receives 2017 Ross Prize in Molecular Medicine

Jeffrey V. Ravetch, Theresa and Eugene M. Lang Professor and head of the Leonard Wagner Laboratory of Molecular Genetics and Immunology, has won the 2017 Ross Prize in Molecular Medicine. The award, given by The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research and its journal Molecular Medicine, honors s...

Crowdsourcing effort helps researchers predict how a molecule will smell

You can anticipate a color before you see it, based solely on the length of light waves. Music can be interpreted from notes on a page without being heard. Not so with odor.

Carolyn Walch Slayman, Rockefeller alumna and pioneer woman in science, dies at 79

Carolyn Walch Slayman, who was one of the first women to graduate from Rockefeller’s Ph.D. program, died last December at the age of 79. Dr. Slayman spent nearly 50 years at the Yale School of Medicine, where she was Sterling Professor of Genetics and deputy dean for academic and scientific affai...

Mouse studies offer new insights about cocaine’s effect on the brain

 Cocaine is one of the most addictive substances known to man, and for good reason: By acting on levels of the “feel-good” chemical dopamine, it produces a tremendous sensation of euphoria. Now the laboratory of Rockefeller University Professor and Nobel Laureate Paul Greengard has shown...

Newly discovered beetle species named after Rockefeller’s Daniel Kronauer

 Scientists can rack up many awards, but to have one’s name cemented in scientific nomenclature is a special kind of honor. In an homage to his mentor Daniel Kronauer, former Rockefeller postdoctoral associate Christoph von Beeren has named a new species of beetle Nymphister kronaueri. ...

Scientists discover an unexpected influence on dividing stem cells’ fate

When most cells divide, they simply make more of themselves. But stem cells, which are responsible for repairing or making new tissue, have a choice: They can generate more stem cells or differentiate into skin cells, liver cells, or virtually any of the body’s specialized cell types. As r...

Howard C. Hang receives 2017 Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry

Howard C. Hang, Richard E. Salomon Family Associate Professor and head of the Laboratory of Chemical Biology and Microbial Pathogenesis, has won the 2017 Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry. The prize, given by the American Chemical Society, recognizes outstanding research in biological chemi...

Encouraging clinical results for an antibody drug to prevent or treat HIV

A new biologic agent—the most potent of its kind so far—is showing early promise as part of a potential new strategy for treating HIV. The drug, known as 10-1074, may also offer a new way to prevent viral infection in people who are at high risk to acquire HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. ...

Atomic-scale view of bacterial proteins offers path to new tuberculosis drugs

With the first detailed analysis of a cellular component from a close relative of the pathogen that causes tuberculosis, Rockefeller scientists are suggesting strategies for new drugs to curb this growing health problem. Each year, nearly half a million people around the world are infected with m...

Discovery helps explain why only some people develop life-threatening dengue infections

For most people who contract it, dengue fever is a relatively mild-mannered disease—at least the first time around. For some, however, a subsequent infection by the virus unleashes a vicious and potentially deadly illness. New research from a team based at The Rockefeller University has begun t...

Study reveals the structure of a protein crucial for DNA replication

Our DNA contains instructions crucial for virtually all forms of life on this planet. But for life to propagate, this blueprint must be copied and passed on to future generations. New findings describing the structure of a key molecule involved in DNA replication place another piece in the puzzle...

Rockefeller president Richard P. Lifton releases statement on U.S. immigration policy

In response to an executive order on immigration issued by President Donald J. Trump Friday, Rockefeller University President Richard P. Lifton today released the following statement: We at Rockefeller University, a world-renowned center for research in the biomedical sciences, oppose both the sp...

Researchers explore how protein production gets distorted in skin cancer

Each cell in the body follows a strict protocol for manufacturing the proteins it needs to function. When a cell turns cancerous, however, its protein production goes off script. A new study led by researchers at the Rockefeller University takes a close look at one way in which this procedure goe...

Antibody combination puts HIV on the ropes

Without antiretroviral drug treatment, the majority of people infected with HIV ultimately develop AIDS, as the virus changes and evolves beyond the body’s ability to control it. But a small group of infected individuals—called elite controllers—possess immune systems capable of defeating the ...

Elaine Fuchs wins 2017 McEwen Award for Innovation

Elaine Fuchs, Rebecca C. Lancefield Professor and head of the Robin Chemers Neustein Laboratory of Mammalian Cell Biology and Development, has been honored with the 2017 McEwen Award for Innovation. The prize, given by the International Society for Stem Cell Research, recognizes groundbreaking wo...

MacKinnon lab charts the anatomy of three molecular channels

Using a state-of-the-art imaging technology in which molecules are deep frozen, scientists in Roderick MacKinnon’s lab at Rockefeller University have reconstructed in unprecedented detail the three-dimensional architecture of three channels that provide a path for specific types of ions to travel...

Biophysicist Gregory M. Alushin receives White House honor for early career scientists

Gregory M. Alushin, assistant professor and head of the Laboratory of Structural Biophysics and Mechanobiology, has been chosen by President Obama as one of 102 researchers to receive the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor given by the U.S. government ...

New research offers clues into how the brain shapes perception to control behavior

What you see is not always what you get. And that, researchers at The Rockefeller University have discovered, is a good thing. “Every time you move your eye, the whole world moves on your retina,” says Gaby Maimon, head of the Laboratory of Integrative Brain Function. “But you don’t perce...

Scientists learn how to ramp up microbes’ ability to make memories

Some microbes can form memories—although, inconveniently for scientists who study the process, they don’t do it very often. Rockefeller University researchers and their colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, have found a way to make bacteria encode memories much more frequently...

Research on sweat glands suggests a route to better skin grafts

As early humans shed the hairy coats of their closest evolutionary ancestors, they also gained a distinct feature that would prove critical to their success: a type of sweat gland that allows the body to cool down quickly. Those tiny glands are enormously useful, allowing us to live in a wide var...

Researchers develop automated melanoma detector for skin cancer screening

Even experts can be fooled by melanoma. People with this type of skin cancer often have mole-looking growths on their skin that tend to be irregular in shape and color, and can be hard to tell apart from benign ones, making the disease difficult to diagnose. Now, researchers at The Rockefeller Un...

Human embryo discovery wins People’s Choice of Science Breakthrough of the Year

A revolutionary method developed by Rockefeller University scientists that allows researchers to study human embryo development in the lab has been voted Breakthrough of the Year by Science magazine readers. The technique, pioneered by Ali Brivanlou, Robert and Harriet Heilbrunn Professor of the ...

New molecular map reveals how cells spew out potassium

New research from Roderick MacKinnon's Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology and Biophysics at The Rockefeller University has determined, for the first time, the complete structure of an ion channel that plays an important role in cellular electrical signaling by sending potassium ions out of the ...

Pels Family Center for Biochemistry and Structural Biology receives new $10 million grant

by Alexandra MacWade, assistant editor A new $10 million endowment gift made by the Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust will provide ongoing support for the university’s chemical and structural biologists through the Pels Family Center for Biochemistry and Structural Biology. Mr. Pels, who was a Roc...