Approximately 10 percent of infants are born with a congenital heart defect, with one of the most common being persistent truncus arteriosus—a hole in the heart. New research conducted in the Caltech laboratory of Marianne Bronner, Albert Billings Ruddock Professor of Biology and director of the Beckman Institute uses chicken embryos as a model organism, to discover the […]

Viruses are nature’s Trojan horses: They gain entrance to cells, smuggle in their genetic material, and use the cell’s own machinery to replicate. For decades, scientists have studied how to repurpose these invaders to deliver therapeutics for treating disease and tools for studying cells. Researchers in the lab of Viviana Gradinaru, professor of neuroscience and […]

Dean Mobbs, assistant professor of cognitive neuroscience and Chen Scholar at Caltech explains the brain circuitry that is causing many of us to feel heightened anxiety during the coronavirus pandemic. He calls the coronavirus an “invisible threat” and says that it causes us to seek out information on media sites about how to prevent it, […]

It has long been the belief that there are two types of observational learning: imitation and emulation. Research led by Caroline Charpentier, a postdoctoral scholar in neuroscience at Caltech, now shows how the brain chooses between the two neural systems responsible for each of these kinds of learning. The study, which appears in the journal Neuron, […]

The microscopic populations of bacteria in our intestines are, in some ways, just like us: They live in communities, eat, work, reproduce, and eventually die. Some live in harmony with our bodies but others don’t, putting us at increased risk for a variety of diseases. Now, Caltech researchers in the laboratory of Sarkis Mazmanian, Luis B. […]