Category: Fred Gage

On the move

August 5, 2009

La Jolla, CA -- Rather than sticking to a single DNA script, human brain cells harbor astonishing genomic variability, according to scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. The findings, to be published in the Aug.

Freedman, Kennicutt, Mould Share 2009 Gruber Cosmology Prize

June 4, 2009

The recipients of the 2009 Cosmology Prize of the Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation are Wendy Freedman, director of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Pasadena, California; Robert Kennicutt, director of the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge in England; and Jeremy Mould, professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne School of Physics.

All current human embryonic stem cell lines contaminated

January 24, 2005

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 Medicine, the researchers found that human embryonic stem cells, including those currently approved for study under federal funding in the U.S., contain a non-human, cell-surface sialic acid called N-glycolylneuraminic acid (Neu5Gc), even though human cells are genetically unable to make it. In a related paper published November 29, 2004 by the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC), the Varki group has also discovered the exact cellular mechanism by which this occurs.