Is it better to do a task quickly and make mistakes, or to do it slowly but perfectly? When it comes to deciding how to fix breaks in DNA, cells face the same choice between two major repair pathways. The decision matters, ...
Cell & Microbiology
Sep 20, 2017
0
249
It might seem like a tomato plant and a subway system don't have much in common, but both, it turns out, are networks that strive to make similar tradeoffs between cost and performance.
Biotechnology
Jul 26, 2017
0
353
Plants and brains are more alike than you might think: Salk scientists discovered that the mathematical rules governing how plants grow are similar to how brain cells sprout connections. The new work, published in Current ...
Biotechnology
Jul 6, 2017
0
898
The conventional way of placing protein samples under an electron microscope during cryo-EM experiments may fall flat when it comes to getting the best picture of a protein's structure. In some cases, tilting a sheet of frozen ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jul 3, 2017
0
135
Salk scientists have developed a new high-throughput technique to determine which proteins in a cell interact with each other. Mapping this network of interactions, or "interactome," has been slow going in the past because ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jun 26, 2017
0
19
Once we start coloring our hair, we may be surprised to learn that we begin to have a problem in common with plant biologists: finding the right dye for our roots. In the case of the biologists, just the right chemical is ...
Biotechnology
Jun 1, 2017
0
57
Just like people, plants need iron to grow and stay healthy. But some plants are better at getting this essential nutrient from the soil than others. Now, a study led by a researcher at the Salk Institute has found that variants ...
Biotechnology
May 24, 2017
0
77
When scientists talk about laboratory stem cells being totipotent or pluripotent, they mean that the cells have the potential, like an embryo, to develop into any type of tissue in the body. What totipotent stem cells can ...
Cell & Microbiology
Apr 6, 2017
0
556
FedEx, UPS, DHL—when it comes to sending packages, choices abound. But the most important delivery service you may not have heard of? mRNA. That's short for messenger RNA, which is how your DNA sends blueprints to the protein-assembly ...
Cell & Microbiology
Feb 15, 2017
0
265
Although we spend a lot of our time online nowadays—streaming music and video, checking email and social media, or obsessively reading the news—few of us know about the mathematical algorithms that manage how our content ...
Computer Sciences
Feb 9, 2017
0
120
