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David Van Valen Named a Moore Inventor Fellow
David Van Valen, assistant professor of biology and biological engineering and affiliated faculty member of the Chen Institute for Neuroscience at Caltech, has been named a 2021 Moore Inventor Fellow. He is one of five fellows named this year by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Each fellow receives $825,000 to “further the development […]
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Mapping Millions of Cells in the Mouse Brain
Building a map of the complex human brain and its approximately 100 billion individual neurons is no easy task. As a precursor to tackling that monumental challenge, researchers have started off with something smaller and easier—the mouse brain—in order to understand different cell types and how they are connected, and also to perfect the technological […]
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Mikhail Shapiro Named HHMI Investigator
Mikhail Shapiro, professor of chemical engineering and affiliated faculty member of the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience at Caltech, has been named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator. He is one of 33 scientists named as investigators this year by HHMI, a nonprofit medical research organization founded by the late billionaire, engineer, […]
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Researchers Build Embryo-Like Structures from Human Stem Cells
Research on human embryos is vital to understanding the earliest stages of human development. Currently, this research is conducted on surplus embryos willingly donated by individuals who have undergone in vitro fertilization however this means the research is limited by availability of embryos and strict international ethical time limits on how long an embryo is […]
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2021 TCCI Fall Newsletter
This year has flown by so quickly and it is with disbelief that Autumn is now suddenly upon us! As you can see below, momentum for TCCI in China has been building over the last few months. In July we were happy to establish our second Chen Frontier lab at Shanghai Mental Health Center.
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TCCI® for Neuroscience Research Building Awarded LEED Gold Certification
TCCI® for Neuroscience Research Building at Caltech has been awarded LEED Gold certification for its numerous sustainable features. This hub for studying the brain consumes nearly 30 percent less energy than a typical lab building. It also features native and drought-resistant vegetation, and serves as a model for resiliency with a one-megawatt fuel cell able […]
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Mice Can Learn Much Faster than Previously Thought
Your commute to work may seem like a mundane thing, but it is a great example of the complicated tasks our brains must carry out on a daily basis: navigation, memory, decision-making, sensory processing, and so on. Researchers often use animal models, such as mice, to study the neural processes underlying these behaviors. However, many […]
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Integrating Genetics and Proteomes to Identify Novel Drug Targets for Alzheimer’s
Recently, Professor Yu Jintai, a researcher from the Neurology Department of Fudan University-affiliated Huashan Hospital and a Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute (TCCI®) Investigator and his team identified seven genes including the angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) gene that can control the occurrence of Alzheimer’s disease at various transcriptomic and expression levels by integrating genetics and proteomes […]
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The Science of Underground Kingdoms
Anthills…a mound of crumbly dirt to many but look closely and you’ll discover tunnels diving downward, branching and leading to specialized chambers that serve as home for the colony’s queen, as nurseries for its young, as farms for fungus cultivated for food, and as dumps for its trash. These are underground cities, some of them home […]
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New Technique Surveys Microbial Spatial Gene Expression Patterns
What do you do at different times in the day? What do you eat? How do you interact with your neighbors? These are some of the questions that biologists would love to ask communities of microbes, from those that live in extreme environments deep in the ocean to those that cause chronic infections in humans. […]