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. […]

Researchers in the lab of Viviana Gradinaru, professor of neuroscience and biological engineering, Heritage Medical Research Institute Investigator and director of the Center for Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience at the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience at Caltech, may have discovered a link between neurons in the gut and Parkinson’s Disease, a debilitating neurodegenerative disorder, impairing […]

A major goal of neuroscience is understanding how all of the brain’s neurons know how to connect to each other to achieve optimum function. Scientists often study the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster because their brains are “hardwired” (meaning nearly identical). Now, Caltech researchers have determined how part of the fly’s visual system forms, an important piece in […]

Caltech researchers have made progress toward understanding the neurological basis of the heightened aggression that male Drosophila show toward one another after recent encounters with females. Their research shows that your brain takes recent experiences into account when coordinating your responses to external stimuli.   The study was conducted in the laboratory of David Anderson, Seymour Benzer Professor of […]

Caltech researchers have developed an innovative way to understand how individual cells communicate with each other and grow over time. Previous techniques have used DNA sequencing to detect DNA barcodes – a process which involves breaking down tissue samples so the DNA from individual cells can be extracted and sequenced.   The new technique uses […]

Work done in the Caltech lab of David Prober, professor of biology and TCCI®-affiliated faculty member has identified a genetic pathway that is necessary and sufficient for proper sleep in zebrafish and appears to also regulate sleep in humans.   This pathway regulates levels of a particular neural compound that could one day be a […]