Tag: "salk" at biology news

Current human embryonic stem cell lines contaminated UCSD/Salk team finds

Currently available lines of human embryonic.stem cells have been contaminated with a non-human molecule that.compromises their potential therapeutic use in human subjects,.according to research by investigators at the University of California,.San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine and the Salk Institute in La Jolla,.California..In a study published online January 23, 2005 in the journal Nature.Med...

UCSD-Salk Team Show Protein’s Gene-Silencing Role In Development of Nervous System

The first evidence that a group of proteins called phosphatases play a key role in the development of the nervous system, has been shown in fruit flies and mice by researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine, in collaboration with scientists at the Salk Institute, La Jolla, California. The phosphatases are required for maintenance of neural stem cells and for...

Salk researchers make fast strides towards understanding how our body controls walking

Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have identified an important circuit in the spinal cord that controls the speed with which our leg muscles contract and relax. Their findings mark an important milestone in understanding the neural circuitry that coordinates walking movements - one of the main obstacles in developing new treatments for spinal cord injuries. . "Knowing which...

In a technical tour de force, Salk scientists take a global view of the epigenome

A collaboration between researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the University of California at Los Angeles captured the genome-wide DNA methylation pattern of the plant Arabidopsis thaliana - the "laboratory rat" of the plant world - in one big sweep. . "In a single experiment we recapitulated 20 years worth of anecdotal findings and then some," says senior author Joseph E...

Salk and Stanford teams join forces to reveal two paths of neurodegeneration

Wiring the developing brain is like creating a topiary garden. Shrubs don't automatically assume the shape of ornamental elephants, and neither do immature nerve cells immediately recognize the "right" target cell. Abundant foliage, either vegetal or neuronal, must first sprout and then be sculpted into an ordered structure. . Neurons extend fibers called axons to target cells in an exuberant man...

Salk scientists get to the root of plant cell fate

When Robert Burns compared his love to a red, red rose, he definitely wasn't referring to a topless mutant. That's because rather than being topped by a lovely, fragrant bloom, a rose mutant in the gene known as TOPLESS would be crowned by a homely second root. . Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies studying the frumpy wild mustard plant Arabidopsis thaliana rather than the el...

Salk scientists untangle steroid hormone signaling in plants

When given extra shots of the plant steroid brassinolide, plants "pump up" like major league baseball players do on steroids. Tracing brassinolide's signal deep into the cell's nucleus, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have unraveled how the growth-boosting hormone accomplishes its job at the molecular level. . .. "The steroid hormone brassino...

Salk scientists hammer out a pathway that promotes muscle cell survival in mice

Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have identified an enzyme that pumps up a cell’s ability to maintain healthy muscle and restores normal muscle function in genetically engineered mice with weak muscles. The study, published online in Nature Medicine, is the first to explore the part this enzyme plays in a cascade of events triggered by exercise-induced hormones and other si...