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Newborns could benefit from time away from home, rodent study suggests
First-time parents face an array of choices, each one seemingly vital for a newborn’s developing body and brain: cloth or disposable diapers? Breast milk or formula? Nanny or daycare? New research from neurobiologists at Rockefeller University may have something to say about that last question, s...
A master repressor protein, Tcf3, holds stem cells back until the time is right
For stem cells, timing is key: To maintain their versatility they rely on a molecular mechanism that keeps the cells in a state of self-renewal until they are needed by adjacent tissue. Now, new research by Rockefeller University’s Elaine Fuchs reveals that in skin, the Tcf3 protein is a critical...
Trash talk: Molecular conversations trigger cell suicide in yeast
For cells, like people, relationships are based on good communication. In yeast cells, however, scientists have shown that communication between certain molecules involved in gene regulation can trigger the cell’s suicide program, suggesting that molecular “crosstalk” may be an important mecha...
Identification of carbon dioxide detectors in insects may help fight infectious disease
Mosquitoes don’t mind morning breath. They use the carbon dioxide people exhale as a way to identify a potential food source. But when they bite, they can pass on a number of dangerous infectious diseases, such as malaria, yellow fever, and West Nile encephalitis. Now, Leslie Vosshall’s laborato...
New means of predicting populations more accurately accounts for random influences
By studying the ways of little jar-bound cannibals — tiny flour beetles who like to eat their young — scientists at Rockefeller University have created techniques they believe are the best yet to capture how random “noise” affects the dynamics of a biological population. To understand how r...
Viral gene hijacks small RNA pathway as a counter-attack strategy
Every day plants are battling for survival against tiny viruses invading their cells. Small RNAs are a major part of the plant’s immune system, but viruses have devised counter-attack molecules that disable this line of defense. Research from Nam-Hai Chua’s laboratory has found a new mechanism f...
Ion channels are key to estrogen's effect on neurons
Despite being one of the body's best-studied hormones, there's still a lot we don't know about estrogens. Now, by studying how these sex hormones impact brain cells at the biophysical level, scientists at Rockefeller University say they exert their powerful effects on behavior in part by affectin...
Measuring awareness is not as simple as a single number
Science fiction describes the crucial difference between a robot and a person as sense of self. But for Rockefeller University’s George Reeke, computers — self or no self — do not yet begin to capture the complexity of the human mind. An article by Reeke and coauthors published recently inĚýPr...
HIV-1 kills immune cells in the gut that may never bounce back
People with HIV have been living longer, healthier lives since the development of highly active antiretroviral therapy (or HAART) in 1995. In fact, most patients on the drug regimen do so well that, according to blood tests, their immune cells appear to return to pre-HIV levels. But two new studi...
Newly discovered class of small RNAs is specifically to reproductive cells
One size does not fit all when it comes to RNA. And now, in addition to long mRNA strands that deliver genetic instructions, and microRNAs (miRNAs) that serve to tweak those instructions and are implicated in everything from insulin production to cancer, scientists have discovered a new player am...
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