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July 1, 2009 | honors and awards
Michael Young receives Gruber Foundation’s 2009 Neuroscience Prize

| Michael W. Young, Richard and Jeanne Fisher Professor and head of the Laboratory of Genetics at Rockefeller University, has received the 2009 Neuroscience Prize of the Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation for groundbreaking discoveries of the molecular mechanisms that control circadian rhythms in the nervous system. |
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June 16, 2009 | honors and awards
Jeffrey Friedman receives Shaw Prize for discovery of leptin

| Jeffrey Friedman, Marilyn M. Simpson Professor and head of the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at Rockefeller, received the 2009 Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine. He shares the $1 million award, known as the Nobel Prize of the East, with the Jackson Laboratory's Douglas L. Coleman for their work leading to the discovery of leptin, a hormone that regulates food intake and body weight. |
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June 7, 2009 | science news
Research identifies 3D structure of key nuclear pore building block

| New research into the molecular machine that filters all information traveling in or out of the cell nucleus contributes to an unfolding picture of cellular evolution that shows a common architecture for the nuclear pore complex (NPC) and the vehicles that transport material between different parts of the cell. Scientists have for the first time glimpsed in three dimensions the subcomplex of the NPC that is its key building block. |
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June 2, 2009 | science news
Report identifies early childhood conditions that lead to adult health disparities

| The origins of many adult diseases can be traced to early negative experiences associated with social class and other markers of disadvantage. Confronting the causes of adversity before and shortly after birth may be a promising way to improve adult health and reduce premature deaths, researchers argue in a paper published today in JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association. |
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May 29, 2009 | science news
Genetic profiling reveals genes active in the earliest brain circuit construction

| Screening for genes that guide the earliest formation of the embryonic brain, researchers identified 229 specifically responsible for subplate neurons, which form the initial scaffolding for assembling cortical circuits. The work indicates the breadth of factors involved in initial neurogenesis and provides investigators with a biochemical handle to start investigating the various contributions. |
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May 27, 2009 | appointments and promotions
New Rockefeller faculty member studies mechanisms of DNA repair

| Agata Smogorzewska, a physician-scientist whose research focuses on DNA repair and on the molecular basis of Fanconi anemia, a genomic instability syndrome that leads to leukemia and other forms of cancer, will join The Rockefeller University as head of the Laboratory of Genome Maintenance. |
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May 26, 2009 | science news
To spread, skin cancer attacks immune dendritic cells

| By knocking out or beguiling dendritic cells, some cancer cells can slip the defenses of the immune system and sack the unsuspecting body. Dendritic cells taken from one of the most common types of skin cancer have most of the known genetic and physiologic hallmarks of their able-bodied fellows in healthy skin tissue. But they fail to stimulate an effective immune response. |
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May 18, 2009 | honors and awards
Rockefeller University names Robert Sapolsky 2008 Lewis Thomas Prize winner

| Primatologist and Stanford University neuroscientist Robert M. Sapolsky has been named the recipient of Rockefeller University’s Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science for 2008. The award recognizes Sapolsky’s 2001 publication A Primate’s Memoir: A Neuroscientist’s Unconventional Life Among the Baboons and will be presented to him at a ceremony at the university’s Caspary Auditorium on June 2. |
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May 13, 2009 | science news
Scientists develop tool to study a deadly parasite’s histone code

| In a genome-wide study, scientists are the first to map the epigenetic changes that are likely to play a role in the molecular origami of transcription initiation in Trypanosoma brucei, the deadly single-celled parasite responsible for African sleeping sickness. |
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May 6, 2009 | science news
New tag could enable more detailed structural studies of mammalian proteins

| By effectively expanding the genetic code, new research reveals a method that could theoretically be adapted to place a fluorescent probe at any position in any protein in a mammalian cell. The new technology could enable single-molecule fluorescent studies in live cells. |
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May 5, 2009 | honors and awards
Eric Siggia joins National Academy of Sciences

| Eric D. Siggia, whose laboratory is interested in applying informatics approaches to study gene expression and other biological problems, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors given to a scientist or engineer in the United States. |
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April 29, 2009 | science news
New sequencing technique to prod medical benefits from killer venom

| Any given venom can contain hundreds of toxins with different functions, but teasing them out of a venom sample is no mean feat. Researchers at Rockefeller University have developed a method of protein sequencing that can speed up the decoding of these toxins by orders of magnitude, raising the prospect that they will be able to test a great many of these molecules for their medical potential. |
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April 28, 2009 | studies and trials
New clinical study probes how light fights psoriasis

| A new clinical trial under way at The Rockefeller University Hospital will literally shine light on psoriasis in hopes of finding out exactly how phototherapy works. Narrowband ultraviolet light B (UVB) therapy is known to kill off T cells, which are partly to blame for the inflammation caused by the disease. Exactly how it does that remains a mystery. |
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April 24, 2009 | honors and awards
Ralph Steinman awarded 2009 Albany Medical Center Prize

| Head of Rockefeller University’s Laboratory of Cellular Physiology and Immunology and the discoverer of dendritic cells, Ralph M. Steinman is one of three recipients of this year’s Albany Medical Center Prize, at $500,000 the largest scientific prize in the country. |
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April 17, 2009
 “Once upon a time, researchers knew that DNA contained four nucleotides: A, T, C and G. Then they found a fifth. And now they’ve found a sixth. Called 5-hydroxymethylcytosine, it's a form of the fifth nucleotide, technically known as 5-methylcytosine. Like its forerunner, it helps turn genes on and off, but in ways that researchers didn’t expect. ‘I think this finding will electrify the field of epigenetics,’ said Nathaniel Heintz, a Rockefeller University molecular biologist, in a press release accompanying the findings.” |
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