When Elise Shen goes to work, her morning starts much like that of anyone else with a desk job. She greets her coworkers. She fetches a cup of coffee. She catches up on email. Then she puts on her VR headset. Shen, a neuroanatomy specialist at the Allen Institute, spends her days at her desk carefully tracing the delicate branching…
In a paper published in the July 31 issue of Science Translational Medicine, researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center used CRISPR-Cas9 to edit long-lived blood stem cells to reverse the clinical symptoms observed with several blood disorders, including sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia. It’s the first time that scientists have specifically edited the genetic makeup of a specialized subset of adult blood stem cellsthat…
A new generation of potent prostate cancer drugs has dramatically extended survival for patients with advanced prostate cancer. But prostate tumors are finding new ways of resisting these treatments, creating a need for new treatment options. In a new study published today, researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center discovered that when aggressive prostate tumors turn off the receptor, their…
Franklin Faust, BS in Neurobiology, a research team member of UW Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, reports back with summaries of the neuroscience talks presented in Day 1 of Exploring Frontiers: Predicting Biology hosted by the Allen Institute for Brain Science. The July 25th afternoon sessions featured brain researchers from around the world. They discussed the use of modeling to better understand the brain. The Allen Institute for Brain Science…
Caroline Cannistra joined ISB in 2018 as a Systems Research Scholar. In this Q&A, Cannistra describes her experiences at ISB, research interests, future aspirations, and much more. ISB: How has your experience as a Systems Research Scholar at ISB been so far? What have you learned through your collaborations with Drs. Jim Heath and Ilya Shmulevich, and members of the Heath and…
Like all good internships, Lauren Hacker’s summer stint in the lab of Dr. Soheil Meshinchi has been hands-on. She’s been busy pipetting DNA samples into tiny vials, working with exotic-sounding instruments like thermocycles and cranking out copies of genetic material. The high school senior from Omaha, Nebraska, seems at home amidst the white coats and glass beakers. But while the Meshinchi Lab…
What happens when we give up? Inside the brain, a group of cells known as nociceptin neurons get very active before a mouse’s breakpoint. They emit nociceptin, a complex molecule that suppresses dopamine, a chemical largely associated with motivation. The findings, reported July 25 in Cell, offer new insight into the complex world of motivation and reward. The nociceptin neurons are located…
Summer school is in session for researchers at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, and although there are text books and a final exam, very little else about the biology course taught by Dr. Philip Morgan and his fellow scientist and wife, Dr. Margaret Sedensky, is business as usual. That’s because their students are Tibetan monks and their classroom is at a monastic university in…
Scientists have created the first completely artificial protein switch that can work inside living cells to modify—or even commandeer—the cell’s complex internal circuitry. The switch is dubbed LOCKR, short for Latching, Orthogonal Cage/Key pRotein. Companion papers published July 24 in the journal Nature describe LOCKR’s design and demonstrate several practical applications of the technology. The work was conducted by bioengineering teams led…
Earlier this year, David Baker was sitting at his computer at the Institute for Protein Design, in Seattle, worrying about a situation familiar to anyone who’s ever been a graduate student: it was his turn to present at the weekly group meeting, but he didn’t have any results to show. “I really hadn’t made much progress. And I was totally…