With the help of genetically engineered mice whose livers turned into glowing light bulbs, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have illuminated the underpinnings of an insidious and growing health concern – type II diabetes. read story
Unlike your computer’s memory chips, whose circuits are etched into a solid slab of silicon, real brain circuits change shape as they learn. HHMI investigator Michael D. Ehlers and his colleagues at Duke University are themselves learning how neurons remold their connections, and they may have identified the brain’s favored sculpting tool.
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Last year, the two inventors—both unemployed at the time—developed an elegant procedure out of an idea they had begun exploring together in the 1990s. Instead of having a muddle of fluorescently labeled proteins glowing at once, sloshing light waves everywhere, they found a way to turn on just a few molecules at a time. read in full issue (pdf)
Scientific discoveries sometimes emerge from the most unexpected places. HHMI Professor Graham C. Walker, for instance, never predicted that a classroom experiment with soil bacteria would uncover a missing link in the biochemical pathway for manufacturing vitamin B12.
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If the thought of invasive medical procedures makes you queasy, HHMI investigator Owen N. Witte points out that “there’s a noninvasive trend in medical diagnosis—to measure things inside the body without having to stick tubes in a patient or do an operation.” Witte, a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, has recently furthered this trend, leading a team from three medical institutions to develop a noninvasive technique based on positron emission tomography (PET). The scientists captured three-dimensional views of one body component never before seen from the outside—the immune system.
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A fountain of youth springs from within the brain of every mammal, report HHMI investigator Alexandra L. Joyner and her former postdoctoral associate Sohyun Ahn in the October 6, 2005, issue of Nature. No, the two researchers haven’t unlocked the secret to immortality. But their discovery of a method to visualize an elusive population of stem cells that has the potential to regenerate nerves and other brain cells may explain how certain regions of the brain rejuvenate themselves. Moreover, the findings may allow researchers to tap the revitalizing powers of stem cells for repairing injured and diseased brain tissue.
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HHMI investigator Richard Flavell and his team observed the first instance of genes from separate chromosomes coordinating their activities by touching each other.
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Combining high-resolution serial electron microscopic tomography, neuroelectrophysiological measurements, mathematical modeling, and computer graphics, a multi-institution team led by HHMI investigator Terrence J. Sejnowski at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies has overturned a half-century’s dogma in neurobiology.
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