News

May 8, 2008 - In the biblical story in which two women bring a baby to King Solomon, both claiming to be the mother, he suggests dividing the child so that each woman can have half. Solomon's proposed solution, meant to reveal the real mother, also illustrates an issue central to economics and moral philosophy: how to distribute goods fairly. Now, researchers at the California Institute of Technology have discovered that reason struggles with emotion to find equitable solutions, and have pinpointed the region of the brain where this takes place. The concept of fairness, they found, is processed in the insular cortex, or insula, which is also the seat of emotional reactions. "The fact that the brain has such a robust response to unfairness suggests that sensing unfairness is a basic evolved capacity," notes Steven Quartz, an associate professor of philosophy at Caltech and author of the study.

May 5, 2008 - Scientists at Caltech have produced the first complete description of the complex network of genes that create a particular type of cell in an organism. Using the complete sequence of the California purple sea urchin and other techniques to determine the regulatory genes expressed at each point during embryonic development and how their interrelationships influence the architecture of the sea urchin's skeletal system, Eric Davidson and his colleagues created a complete blueprint for the development of a lineage of cells whose particular function is to build a series of biomineral skeletal rods inside the embryo. The work appears in the April 22 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

April 16, 2008 - Your brain gets a better workout when you change your routine, say scientists at the California Institute of Technology who have pinpointed one particular circuit that activates your ability to execute a decision. This finding may help drive research in neural prosthetics and in how unhealthy decisions are made. "How you decide to do things is fascinating, and not well understood," says Richard Andersen, Caltech's Boswell Professor of Neuroscience and senior researcher in the study. "We're looking at how different areas interact during the process&mdash'how you make a decision to plan a movement."

April 14, 2008 - In the brain, as in sports, sex, and life, timing—and teamwork—are everything. Such is the message of a series of studies by Caltech's Thanos Siapas and his postdoctoral researcher Evgueniy Lubenov that offer insight into the processes by which memories are stored in the brain and that may someday guide the development of new therapies to prevent epileptic seizures. Using computer models of neuronal circuits and experiments on live rats, the scientists are revealing the curious mechanism by which the brain spontaneously tips itself toward a state balanced between order and chaos. The driving factor in the brain's self-regulation, they say, is the timing of neural pulses.

October 2, 2007 - A team of Caltech researchers found an unexpected link connecting schizophrenia and autism to the importance of covering your mouth whenever you sneeze. Recent studies suggest that if a woman suffers even one respiratory infection during her second trimester, her offspring's risk of schizophrenia rises by three to seven times. Schizophrenia and autism have a strong (though elusive) genetic component. Susceptibility to these disorders is increased by something that occurs to mother or fetus during a bout with the flu. The researchers isolated a protein that plays a pivotal role in that dire chain of events. A paper containing their results, "Maternal immune activation alters fetal brain development through interleukin-6," is published in the October 3 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

September 25, 2007 - Two Caltech faculty members were named MacArthur Fellows today, each winning a five-year, $500,000 grant awarded to creative, original individuals that is often referred to as the "genius grant." Michael Elowitz, Bren Scholar and assistant professor of biology and applied physics, and Paul W. Rothemund, a senior research fellow in computation and neural systems and computer science, are two of 24 MacArthur Fellows honored today.

May 25, 2007 - Malaria infects more than half a billion people every year, and kills more than one million, mostly children. Despite decades of effort, no effective vaccine exists for the disease, caused by single-celled Plasmodium parasites. The parasites are transmitted to humans via the bite of infected mosquitoes. One way to stop malaria is to make the mosquitoes that carry the disease themselves resistant to the pathogen. Getting disease-fighting genes into the mosquito population can be tricky, however, because bugs carrying disease-resistance genes are likely to be less reproductively fit than their wild counterparts, and thus less likely to spread their genes naturally. Caltech Associate Professor of Biology Bruce Hay and his colleagues found a novel method for introducing such genes into insect populations. The work, published recently in the journal Science, involves the creation of a selfish genetic element that is uniquely adapted to spread itself quickly throughout the population.

May 2, 2007 - Four faculty members at the California Institute of Technology have been named to the National Academy of Sciences, an honor long considered one of the highest accolades in the scientific world. The election was held during the 144th annual meeting of the assembly in Washington, D.C.

April 10, 2007 - Because anti-cancer drugs have to be given in high volumes intravenously in order to get them to the tumor, the nausea, hair loss, and weakness that follow feels far worse than the disease. Inspired by his wife's illness, a Caltech chemical engineer is developing ways to send much lower doses straight to the tumor cells.

November 30, 2006 - Schizophrenia and autism spring from a complex interplay of genetic and environmental factors. Getting the flu while pregnant significantly enhances the child's risk; Caltech biologists are exploring the links between the mother's immune system and her unborn child's developing brain.

November 30, 2006 - Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of vision loss in Americans over 50, afflicting most of them to some degree. Researchers at Caltech and the University of California at San Francisco are working on a method to diagnose this irreversable disease early and halt its progress.

November 16, 2006 - In a development that could potentially benefit victims of degenerative neurological diseases, researchers have succeeded in stimulating the growth of neural stem cells in the adult brain. Such cells could then be directed towards repairing one's own brain.

November 9, 2006 - A group of 240 researchers from more than 70 institutions has announced the sequencing of the male California purple sea urchin. An animal frequently used in experiments, its genome has been studied intensely for years at Caltech's Kerckhoff Marine Biological Laboratory (KML), and will contribute significantly to biomedical advances of the future.

August 4, 2006 - Biologists for the first time have obtained a three-dimensional image of the complete bacterial flagellum assembly using a new technology called electron cryotomography. The image shows in unprecedented detail both the rotor of the flagellum and the stator, or protein assembly that not only attaches the rotor to the cell wall, but also generates the torque that serves to rotate it.

July 28, 2006 - According to Assistant Professor of Biology Grant Jensen, a cell is like a multistory factory--a set of interwoven production lines complete with conveyor belts, forklifts, and steel I-beams to hold up the roof. An emerging field called electron cryotomography can make 3-D pictures of all the working parts of all the molecular machinery inside an individual cell at once.

July 28, 2006 - Bacteria don't deserve their bad reputation. Geobiologist Dianne K. Newman speaks up for them, and explores the inner workings of bacterial biofilms. "As a microbiologist," she says, "I'm appalled when I go to buy soap or dishwashing detergent, because these days it's very hard to find anything that doesn't say 'antibacterial' on it."

April 26, 2006 - Tell me where are emotions bred: Or in the heart or in the head? how begot, how nourished: "With gazing fed," a neuroscientist replies. "It is engendered in the eyes." Shakespeare was closer to the mark than he knew.

April 24, 2006 - According to researchers, the shapes of letters and symbols used throughout history by the world's many cultures may have arisen to take advantage of the way human vision has evolved to see common structures and shapes in nature.

April 12, 2006 - Caltech has been awarded $2.3 million from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to support 10 postdoctoral scholars in the Caltech Stem Cell Biology Training Program. The grant is one of 16 that were awarded by CIRM to non-profit institutions in California. The grants total $12.1 million and are intended to train the next generation of stem cell researchers. They are the first grants awarded by the California stem cell agency.

March 14, 2006 - Caltech senior research associate Akiko Kumagai and her colleagues have shown that a protein with the unusual name "TopBP1" is responsible for activating the cascade of reactions that prohibit cells from dividing with corrupted genetic blueprints. The researchers say the result is a key molecular insight that could lead to molecular breakthroughs in cancer therapy.

March 9, 2006 - Researchers have devised a method of database-mining to make predictions about genetic interactions. The new procedure computationally integrates several sources of data from several organisms to study the tiny worm C. elegans, or nematode, an animal commonly used in biological experiments.

March 2, 2006 - We old-world primates evolved our particular brand of color vision so that we could subtly discriminate slight changes in skin tone due to blushing and blanching, researchers say. The work may answer a long-standing question about why trichromat vision (that is, color via three cone receptors) evolved in the first place in primates.

January 11, 2006 - To preserve the integrity of their genomes, cells employ an enormous crew of maintenance genes to repair genetic damage. In a landmark study featured on the cover of the December issue of the open-access journal PLoS Genetics, Caltech professor of chemistry and biology Judith L. Campbell and her colleagues and collaborators in the laboratory of Charles Boone at the University of Toronto, reveal for the first time all of the 322 genes that make up that work force in yeast.

December 19, 2005 - Caltech's "fly room" may not be the best place to adopt a pet, but over the years it has served a number of researchers in the Division of Biology--among them, the late Ed Lewis, who went on to win the Nobel Prize in 1995 for his fundamental work in fruit-fly genetics. The fly room contains hundreds of culture bottles, each the size and shape of a milk bottle and containing enough nutrient to keep about a hundred flies nourished for their 30-day life spans.

October 10, 2005 - The National Cancer Institute recently awarded an $18 million grant to the new Nanosystems Biology Cancer Center at Caltech. A collaborative effort with the Institute for Systems Biology and UCLA, the center will place a focus on development and validation of tools for early detection and stratification of the disease. James Heath, the Gilloon Professor of Chemistry, will direct.

September 12, 2005 - A three-year, $2.3 million grant was earmarked recently for the creation of the Caltech Stem-Cell Training Program. The grant is part of the first round of funding resulting from the passage by California voters of the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative. The bond measure provides $3 billion over the next ten years to support human embryonic stem-cell research at California universities and research institutions.

August 11, 2005 - Smell is an "old" sense. In primates, including humans, olfaction has been overtaken by vision, but it has kept its ancient connections to the emotional parts of the brain.

July 20, 2005 - Masakazu "Mark" Konishi, a Caltech neuroscientist renowned for his work on the neural wiring that allows owls to swoop in on their prey in darkness, and his former postdoctoral researcher Eric Knudsen, have been awarded this year's Peter Gruber Foundation Neuroscience Prize.

June 22, 2005 - Caltech engineers John Dabiri and Mory Gharib report on their work in understanding the fundamental nature of biological fluid transport. The work could lead to new tools for diagnosing heart disease.

June 17, 2005 - A research team of neuroscientists from Caltech and UCLA has found that a single neuron can recognize people, landmarks, and objects—even letter strings of names ("H-A-L-L-E-B-E-R-R-Y").

June 1, 2005 - Emeritus professor of biology Norman Horowitz, a geneticist best known for his work on the "one-gene, one-enzyme" hypothesis and the experiments aboard the Viking lander to search for life on Mars in 1976, died on Wednesday, June 1, at his home in Pasadena. He was 90.

May 26, 2005 - A food article in the current L.A. Weekly on Sichuan restaurants in Monterey Park touches on an area of study being conducted by Seymor Benzer, the Boswell Professor of Neuroscience, Emeritus. Having identified the genes that govern gastronomic preference, Benzer has genetically modified fruit flies so that they enjoy wasabi and chili sauce, condiments that they usually avoid.

May 19, 2005 - Caltech neuroscientists have traced the neural wiring between the amygdala, which is involved in the initial response to cues that signal love or war, and the hypothalamus, which coordinates the innate reproductive or defensive behaviors triggered by these cues. They think they may have identified the genes involved in laying down the wiring itself.

May 3, 2005 - Caltech's newest members of the National Academy of Sciences are Richard Andersen, James Eisenstein, and Wallace Sargent. Roger Blandford, a former Caltech faculty member and current visiting associate in physics, is also among the electees.

March 22, 2005 - Richard Andersen, Boswell Professor of Neuroscience at Caltech, and Kai Zinn, professor of biology, have each received a 2005 McKnight Neuroscience of Brain Disorder Award. Andersen's work focuses on brain-implant technology that may allow paralyzed patients to use their thoughts to move artificial limbs. Zinn's research centers on prions, their formation, and their possible functions in the healthy brain.

March 11, 2005 - Lili Yang, a postdoctoral scholar, and David Baltimore, professor of biology, Caltech president, and Nobel Prize recipient, have developed a new methodology that may someday fight cancer. Their animal model was the mouse, and while mice are often not predictive of behavior in humans, says Baltimore, "everything we have done is in principle possible to do in humans, so we plan to try to develop a system for optimizing the ability to program human stem cells." Their report appears in the current online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

January 4, 2005 - Nativism is the view that there are ideas, beliefs, knowledge, or concepts that are inborn or innate; it's the idea that some of what we know is already in us to start with. Reviewing the reasons why a nativist holds that a large amount of linguistic knowledge is innately known, Fiona Cowie offers some reasons why she doesn't believe it is.

October 21, 2004 - In response to the arduously slow progress in finding cures for AIDS and cancer, Caltech biologists have established the Engineering Immunity project, designed to create a novel immunological approach to treating--and even some day preventing--HIV infection and some cancers like melanoma. A $1.5 million matching grant from the Skirball Foundation was used to launch this project.

October 6, 2004 - Biologist Erin Schuman is interested in how memories are formed--or forgotten. She and graduate student Miguel Remondes, now at MIT, have confirmed that the brain's "temporoammonic pathway" plays a vital role in forging long-term memories.

October 1, 2004 - "Sometimes letting nature tell you what's important is the better way to go," says Caltech biologist Raymond Deshaies. He's referring to new work to come out of his lab that defies conventional thinking--they've discovered a chemical that stops a key cell function, but, more importantly, suggests a new possible target within a cell, once thought to be untenable, for future therapeutic drugs

September 28, 2004 - The late Caltech geneticist Ed Lewis played a pivotal role in the national debate on nuclear testing. It was known that high-energy radiation caused mutations in fruit flies in proportion to the dose, but the Atomic Energy Commission assumed that a threshold existed below which no harm would occur in humans. It fell to Lewis and others to enlighten the Commission.

September 15, 2004 - New evidence shows that a stressed fly emits an odor that makes other flies avoid the space in which the stressful event occurred. The work could lead to more effective insect repellents.

September 3, 2004 - Caltech's Alexander Varshavsky has been named a corecipient of the Protein Society's 2005 Stein and Moore Award. The Smits Professor of Cell Biology codiscovered the ubiquitin system, which is now central to a variety of biological processes: the cell cycle, cell growth and death, and the immune response, to name a few. The ubiquitin system has also become the cornerstone of cancer research.

August 6, 2004 - Oriented cell division is a fundamental process in developing organisms, whether you are a worm, a fruit fly--or a human. Now for the first time, researchers at Caltech report that the molecular machinery that underlies oriented cell division in invertebrates serves a twofold purpose in the development of the vertebrate embryo.

July 22, 2004 - Edward Lewis, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking studies of how genes regulate the development of specific regions of the body, died on July 21 at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena after a long battle with cancer. He was 86.

July 8, 2004 - Caltech neuroscientists have made great strides in the quest to create prosthetic devices operated by brain activity which could permit paralyzed patients to operate computers, robots, motorized wheelchairs--and perhaps someday even automobiles.

June 24, 2004 - Neurons in the brain signal one another by secreting special chemicals called neurotransmitters. So-called "minis"--miniature excitatory synaptic events--are single packets of neurotransmitters that trail the main event, and are long thought to have no biological significance. On the contrary, says post-doc Michael Sutton, minis may play an important role in regulating protein synthesis.

May 25, 2004 - "In a game of chess, a player can anticipate various outcomes before making a definite move," says Caltech postdoc Elizabeth Torres. With body movement, the brain does something similar. It employs a transitional stage to simulate a movement. This transition occurs between the visual cues sent by the eye (here's the object you want), and the actual movement of bone and tissue to grab it.

May 19, 2004 - Researchers report that the color of an object can be misassigned, even as observers are intently watching an ongoing event, because of the way the brain combines the perceptions of motion and color.

May 4, 2004 - Almost every day some virus or other makes news--HIV, SARS, smallpox as a bioweapon, last fall's new flu, and, most recently, the avian flu in Southeast Asia. But David Baltimore's impression is that most people don't know what a virus is.

March 8, 2004 - In the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), graduate student Eliot Bush and his professor, John Allman, report their discovery of a basic difference between the brains of primates and carnivores.

February 11, 2004 - The two scientists who pioneered the scientific study of consciousness, Christof Koch and Francis Crick, think that "zombie agents"—that is, routine behaviors that we perform without even thinking—deserve serious scientific attention. In a new book titled The Quest for Consciousness, Caltech neuroscientist Koch asserts that much of what goes on in our heads escapes awareness.

December 9, 2003 - Caltech neuroscientist John Allman and his colleagues have identified a special class of neurons, found only in humans and some of the great apes, called spindle cells. These relatively enormous cells may lie at the heart of the human social emotion circuitry, perhaps even providing a moral sense.

November 24, 2003 - Researchers in the Division of Biology at Caltech, in collaboration with UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center, have discovered that brain tumors may be derived from the cells that form the nervous system.

November 21, 2003 - Christof Koch, Caltech's Troendle Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Biology and professor of computation and neural systems, is featured on the cover of the November 21 issue of the LA Weekly. The in-depth article, "Extreme Science: The Zombie Within—Christof Koch and His Quest for Consciousness," explores Koch's research and his life.

November 12, 2003 - Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but a new psychophysical study from Caltech's Shinsuke Shimojo and his colleagues suggests that the length of the beholding is important, too.

September 26, 2003 - The Caltech-led WormBase project, an ongoing multi-institutional effort to make genetic information on the experimental animal known as C. elegans freely available to the world, has been augmented with a new $12 million grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute.

September 12, 2003 - A JPL inventor develops an early-warning biodetection device.