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MacKinnon lab charts the anatomy of three molecular channels

Using a state-of-the-art imaging technology in which molecules are deep frozen, scientists in Roderick MacKinnon’s lab at Rockefeller University have reconstructed in unprecedented detail the three-dimensional architecture of three channels that provide a path for specific types of ions to travel...

Biophysicist Gregory M. Alushin receives White House honor for early career scientists

Gregory M. Alushin, assistant professor and head of the Laboratory of Structural Biophysics and Mechanobiology, has been chosen by President Obama as one of 102 researchers to receive the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor given by the U.S. government ...

New research offers clues into how the brain shapes perception to control behavior

What you see is not always what you get. And that, researchers at The Rockefeller University have discovered, is a good thing. “Every time you move your eye, the whole world moves on your retina,” says Gaby Maimon, head of the Laboratory of Integrative Brain Function. “But you don’t perce...

Scientists learn how to ramp up microbes’ ability to make memories

Some microbes can form memories—although, inconveniently for scientists who study the process, they don’t do it very often. Rockefeller University researchers and their colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, have found a way to make bacteria encode memories much more frequently...

Research on sweat glands suggests a route to better skin grafts

As early humans shed the hairy coats of their closest evolutionary ancestors, they also gained a distinct feature that would prove critical to their success: a type of sweat gland that allows the body to cool down quickly. Those tiny glands are enormously useful, allowing us to live in a wide var...

Researchers develop automated melanoma detector for skin cancer screening

Even experts can be fooled by melanoma. People with this type of skin cancer often have mole-looking growths on their skin that tend to be irregular in shape and color, and can be hard to tell apart from benign ones, making the disease difficult to diagnose. Now, researchers at The Rockefeller Un...

Human embryo discovery wins People’s Choice of Science Breakthrough of the Year

A revolutionary method developed by Rockefeller University scientists that allows researchers to study human embryo development in the lab has been voted Breakthrough of the Year by Science magazine readers. The technique, pioneered by Ali Brivanlou, Robert and Harriet Heilbrunn Professor of the ...

New molecular map reveals how cells spew out potassium

New research from Roderick MacKinnon's Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology and Biophysics at The Rockefeller University has determined, for the first time, the complete structure of an ion channel that plays an important role in cellular electrical signaling by sending potassium ions out of the ...

Pels Family Center for Biochemistry and Structural Biology receives new $10 million grant

by Alexandra MacWade, assistant editor A new $10 million endowment gift made by the Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust will provide ongoing support for the university’s chemical and structural biologists through the Pels Family Center for Biochemistry and Structural Biology. Mr. Pels, who was a Roc...

New structure shows how cells assemble protein-making machinery

Scientists at The Rockefeller University have created the most detailed three-dimensional images to date of an important step in the process by which cells make the nano-machines responsible for producing all-important protein. The results, described December 15 in Science, are prompting the rese...