Salk Institute for Biological Studies

The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is a premier independent, non-profit, scientific research institute located in La Jolla, California. It was founded in 1960 by Jonas Salk

Jonas Salk

Jonas Edward Salk was an American medical researcher and virologist, best known for his discovery and development of the first safe and effective polio vaccine. He was born in New York City to parents from Ashkenazi Jewish Russian immigrant families...

, the developer of the polio vaccine

Polio vaccine

Two polio vaccines are used throughout the world to combat poliomyelitis . The first was developed by Jonas Salk and first tested in 1952. Announced to the world by Salk on April 12, 1955, it consists of an injected dose of inactivated poliovirus. An oral vaccine was developed by Albert Sabin...

; among the founding consultants were Jacob Bronowski

Jacob Bronowski

Jacob Bronowski was a Polish-Jewish British mathematician, biologist, historian of science, theatre author, poet and inventor...

and Francis Crick

Francis Crick

Francis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist, and most noted for being one of two co-discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953, together with James D. Watson...

. Building did not start until spring of 1962. The institute consistently ranks among the top institutions in the US in terms of research output and quality in the life sciences. In 2004, the Times Higher Education Supplement ranked Salk as the world's top biomedicine research institute, and in 2009 it was ranked number one globally by ScienceWatch in the neuroscience and behavior areas.

The institute employs 850 researchers in 60 research groups and focuses its research in three areas: Molecular Biology

Molecular biology

Molecular biology is the branch of biology that deals with the molecular basis of biological activity. This field overlaps with other areas of biology and chemistry, particularly genetics and biochemistry...

and Genetics

Genetics

Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....

; Neuroscience

Neuroscience

Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. However, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that collaborates with other fields such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics,...

s; and Plant

Plant

Plants are living organisms belonging to the kingdom Plantae. Precise definitions of the kingdom vary, but as the term is used here, plants include familiar organisms such as trees, flowers, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and green algae. The group is also called green plants or...

Biology. Research topics include cancer

Cancer

Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...

, diabetes, birth defects, Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease also known in medical literature as Alzheimer disease is the most common form of dementia. There is no cure for the disease, which worsens as it progresses, and eventually leads to death...

, Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system...

, AIDS

AIDS

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...

, and the neurobiology of American Sign Language

American Sign Language

American Sign Language, or ASL, for a time also called Ameslan, is the dominant sign language of Deaf Americans, including deaf communities in the United States, in the English-speaking parts of Canada, and in some regions of Mexico...

. The March of Dimes

March of Dimes

The March of Dimes Foundation is a United States nonprofit organization that works to improve the health of mothers and babies.-Organization:...

provided the initial funding and continues to support the institute. Current research is funded by a variety of organizations, such as the NIH, the HHMI and private organizations such as Paris-based Ipsen

Ipsen

Ipsen is a French pharmaceutical company headquartered in Paris, France. It primarily develops and markets medications used in oncology, endocrinology and the treatment of neuromuscular disorders. In 2005, Ipsen spent € 169 million—20.9% of consolidated sales—on research and development, according...

and the Waitt Family Foundation. In addition, the internally administered Innovation Grants Program encourages cutting-edge high-risk research. The institute appointed genome biologist Eric Lander

Eric Lander

Eric Steven Lander is a Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , a member of the Whitehead Institute, and director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard who has devoted his career toward realizing the promise of the human genome for medicine. He is co-chair of U.S...

and stem cell biologist Irving Weissman

Irving Weissman

Irving Lerner "Irv" Weissman M.D. is a Professor of Pathology and Developmental Biology at Stanford University where he is the Director of the Stanford Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine....

as non-resident fellows in November 2009.

The campus was designed by Louis Kahn

Louis Kahn

Louis Isadore Kahn was an American architect, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. After working in various capacities for several firms in Philadelphia, he founded his own atelier in 1935...

. Salk had sought to make a beautiful campus in order to draw the best researchers in the world. The original buildings of the Salk Institute were designated as a historical landmark in 1991. The entire 27 acres (10.9 ha) site was deemed eligible by the California Historical Resources Commission in 2006 for listing on the National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

Nobel laureates

The institute has four Nobel laureates on its faculty: Elizabeth Blackburn

Elizabeth Blackburn

Elizabeth Helen Blackburn, AC, FRS is an Australian-born American biological researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies the telomere, a structure at the end of chromosomes that protects the chromosome. Blackburn co-discovered telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes the...

, Sydney Brenner

Sydney Brenner

Sydney Brenner, CH FRS is a South African biologist and a 2002 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine laureate, shared with H...

, Renato Dulbecco

Renato Dulbecco

Renato Dulbecco is an Italian virologist who won a 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on reverse transcriptase. In 1973 he was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University together with Theodore Puck and Harry Eagle. Dulbecco was the recipient of the Selman A...

and Roger Guillemin

Roger Guillemin

Roger Charles Louis Guillemin received the National Medal of Science in 1976, and the Nobel prize for medicine in 1977 for his work on neurohormones, sharing the prize that year with Andrew Schally and Rosalyn Sussman Yalow.Completing his undergraduate work at the University of Burgundy, Guillemin...

. Two of Salk's Nobel laureates are now deceased: Francis Crick

Francis Crick

and Robert W. Holley

Robert W. Holley

Robert William Holley was an American biochemist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 for describing the structure of alanine transfer RNA, linking DNA and protein synthesis.Holley was born in Urbana, Illinois, and graduated from Urbana High School in 1938...

. Another five scientists trained at Salk have gone on to win Nobel prizes.

Scientific activities

The institute is organized into several research units, each of which is further composed of several scientific groups, each led by a member of the faculty. Some of these units are:

Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory
Regulatory Biology Laboratory
Structural Biology Laboratory
Gene Expression Laboratory
Laboratory of Genetics
Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory
Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory
Systems Neurobiology Laboratories
Computational Neurobiology Laboratory
Clayton Foundation Laboratories for Peptide Biology
Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory
Chemical Biology and Proteomics Laboratory
Immunobiology and Microbial Pathogenesis Laboratory
The Renato Dulbecco Laboratories for Cancer Research

The institute is currently led by Dr William Brody, who assumed charge from interim President Roger Guillemin

Roger Guillemin

on 1 March 2009. There are 59 faculty members (assistant, associate and full professor level). Eight of these are members of the HHMI while more than a quarter are members of the NAS

National Academy of Sciences

National Academy of Sciences commonly refers to the academy in the United States of America.National Academy of Sciences may also refer to :* National Academy of Sciences of Argentina* Armenian National Academy of Sciences...

.

In terms of research output measured by number of publications and citations, the institute is recognized as one of the world's leading institutions in several areas of biology, but especially so in neurosciences and plant biology.

In December 2009, the Time magazine ranked Joe Ecker's mapping of the human epigenome as the #2 biggest scientific achievement of 2009.

In May 2008, California announced that it would provide 270 million US dollars for funding CIRM

California Institute for Regenerative Medicine

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine was created by California's Proposition 71 , which authorized it to issue $3 billion in grants, funded by bonds, over ten years for embryonic stem cell and other biomedical research. It is claimed to be the world's largest single backer of...

, a joint effort between Salk Institute, UCSD, Burnham Institute and TSRI.

Architecture

The institute is housed in a complex designed by the firm of Louis Kahn

Louis Kahn

. Michael Duff of the Kahn firm was the supervising architect and a major design influence on the structure that consists of two symmetric buildings with a stream of water flowing in the middle of a courtyard that separates the two. The buildings themselves have been designed to promote collaboration, and thus there are no walls separating laboratories on any floor. There is one floor in the basement, and two above it on both sides. The lighting fixtures have been designed to easily slide along rails on the roof, in tune with the collaborative and open philosophy of the Salk Institute's science. According to A. Perez, the concrete was made with volcanic ash relying on the basis of ancient Roman concrete making techniques, and as a result gives off a warm, pinkish glow. The basement also houses the transgenic core. Each laboratory block has five study towers, with each tower containing four offices, except for those near the entrance to the court, which only contain two. A diagonal wall allows each of the thirty-six scientists using the studies to have a view of the Pacific, and every study is fitted with a combination of operable sliding and fixed glass panels in teak wood frames.

Most of the laboratories and studies are named after the benefactors, such as the Sloan-Swartz Center for Theoretical Neurobiology and the Razavi Newman Center for Bioinformatics. A library that houses current periodicals, some books and computers is located on the 3rd level of the west end of the North building. The Frederic de Hoffmann auditorium and the Trustees' Room are located in the basement of the east buildings of the institute.

In the courtyard is a citrus grove containing several orderly rows of lime trees. The original grove contained orange and kumquat trees which were then replaced with lime trees in the 1995 grove refurbishment. Plans are currently underway to substitute semi-dwarf Valencia oranges. This replacement is due primarily to a need to remove current trees for structural repairs and water-proofing of central plant ceilings. The trees will be mulched and used for ground cover in compliance with project commitments to sustainability. The decision not to replant additional lime trees stems from dissatisfaction with the manner in which the current trees defoliate and turn yellow in the shade. The Valencia compensates for shade by producing additional chlorophyll in shaded sections, becoming greener.

Meaning

The Salk Institute’s open environment teeming with empty space is symbolic of an open environment for creation, the symmetry stands for scientific precision, and submerging crevasses allow warm, natural light to enter the buildings like the intellectual light that leads to discovery. The contrast between balance and dynamic space manifests a pluralistic invitation for scientific study in structures developed to accommodate their respective functions as parts of a research facility. Although modern in appearance, it is essentially an isolated compound for individual and collaborative study not unlike monasteries as sanctuaries for religious discovery, and they directly influenced Kahn in his design. Ultimately, the Salk Institute’s meaning transcends function and physical place as a reflection of Western Civilization’s pursuit of truth through science instead of God: it is Louis Kahn’s masterpiece reinterpretation of the monastic “intellectual retreat” in our day and age.

History

Salk and Kahn approached the city of San Diego in March 1960 about a gift of land on the Torrey Pines

Torrey Pines, San Diego, California

Torrey Pines is a primarily residential community of in the northern coastal area of San Diego, California.- Geography :Torrey Pines is bordered to the north by the city of Del Mar, to the south by La Jolla, to the east by Interstate 5, Carmel Valley, Torrey Hills, the Los Peñasquitos Canyon...

Mesa and were granted their request after a referendum

Referendum

A referendum is a direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to either accept or reject a particular proposal. This may result in the adoption of a new constitution, a constitutional amendment, a law, the recall of an elected official or simply a specific government policy. It is a form of...

in June 1960. Construction began in 1962 and a handful of researchers moved into the first laboratory in 1963. Additional buildings housing more laboratories as well as the organizational administrative offices were constructed in the 1990s, designed by Anshen & Allen

Anshen & Allen

Anshen + Allen is an international architecture, planning and design firm headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Boston, Columbus and London. The firm was ranked eighth for sustainable practices, and nineteenth overall in the "Architect 50" published by Architect magazine...

.

As a memorial to Jonas Salk, a golden engraving lies on the floor at the entrance to the institute: "Hope lies in dreams, in imagination and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality."
Francis Crick

Francis Crick

held the post of J.W. Kieckhefer Distinguished Research Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. His later research centered on theoretical neurobiology and attempts to advance the scientific study of human consciousness. He remained in this post at the Salk Institute until his death in 2004.

Training program

Although the Salk Institute is not a degree-granting institution, it runs a graduate program together with the neighboring UCSD, and all Salk Institute professors receive adjunct appointments in the Division of Biological Sciences at UCSD. In addition, several faculty members are affiliated with other programs such as the Neuroscience Graduate Program and the Cellular and Molecular Medicine. The students pursue either a Ph.D.

Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

or an M.D

Doctor of Medicine

Doctor of Medicine is a doctoral degree for physicians. The degree is granted by medical schools...

/Ph.D.

Ph.D.

degree.

In addition, the institute employs postdoctoral scholars and staff scientists who receive training for academic leadership.

Administration

William R. Brody

William Ralph Brody is an American radiologist and academic administrator. He is the President of the Salk Institute and former President of The Johns Hopkins University, a position which he had held from 1996 to 2009....

is the President of the Salk Institute since 1 March 2009. Irwin M. Jacobs

Irwin M. Jacobs

Irwin Mark Jacobs , is an electrical engineer and the co-founder and former chairman of Qualcomm, and chair of the board of trustees of the Salk Institute. In 2010, Jacobs was listed as number 828 on Forbes's annual list of the World's Top Billionaires.-Education:Jacobs earned his B.S...

is Chairman of the Board of Trustees. Joanne Chory is the chair of the academic council.

50th Anniversary Celebration

From 22–27 April 2010, the Salk Institute hosted glass sculptures by artist Dale Chihuly

Dale Chihuly

Dale Chihuly is an American glass sculptor and entrepreneur.-Biography:Chihuly graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in Tacoma, Washington. He enrolled at the College of the Puget Sound in 1959...

to celebrate 50 years of its inception. The event was underwritten by Irwin Jacobs

Irwin M. Jacobs

, chairman of the board of trustees.

Distinguished faculty

Elizabeth Blackburn
Elizabeth Blackburn
Elizabeth Helen Blackburn, AC, FRS is an Australian-born American biological researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies the telomere, a structure at the end of chromosomes that protects the chromosome. Blackburn co-discovered telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes the...

(non-resident faculty), Nobel laureate (for work on telomeres and telomerases).
Sydney Brenner
Sydney Brenner
Sydney Brenner, CH FRS is a South African biologist and a 2002 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine laureate, shared with H...

, Nobel laureate (for work with C. elegans)
Renato Dulbecco
Renato Dulbecco
Renato Dulbecco is an Italian virologist who won a 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on reverse transcriptase. In 1973 he was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University together with Theodore Puck and Harry Eagle. Dulbecco was the recipient of the Selman A...

, Nobel laureate (for viral transformation of cells).
Roger Guillemin
Roger Guillemin
Roger Charles Louis Guillemin received the National Medal of Science in 1976, and the Nobel prize for medicine in 1977 for his work on neurohormones, sharing the prize that year with Andrew Schally and Rosalyn Sussman Yalow.Completing his undergraduate work at the University of Burgundy, Guillemin...

, Nobel laureate (for elucidating the structures of neurohormones TRH and GnRH)
Ursula Bellugi
Ursula Bellugi
Ursula Bellugi is a Professor and Director of the Laboratory for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. Broadly stated, she conducts research on the biological bases of language...

, founder of the neurobiology of American Sign Language
American Sign Language
American Sign Language, or ASL, for a time also called Ameslan, is the dominant sign language of Deaf Americans, including deaf communities in the United States, in the English-speaking parts of Canada, and in some regions of Mexico...
Terrence Sejnowski, renowned computational neuroscientist.
Ronald M. Evans
Ronald M. Evans
Ronald M. Evans is an American professor and biologist who works at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. He received his BS and PhD degrees from UCLA, followed by a postdoctoral training in Rockefeller University...

, winner of the Lasker Award
Lasker Award
The Lasker Awards have been awarded annually since 1946 to living persons who have made major contributions to medical science or who have performed public service on behalf of medicine. They are administered by the Lasker Foundation, founded by advertising pioneer Albert Lasker and his wife Mary...
Fred H. Gage, highly cited neuroscientist.
Tony Hunter, discoverer of tyrosine phosphorylation of proteins.

Francis Crick
Francis Crick
Francis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist, and most noted for being one of two co-discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953, together with James D. Watson...

(deceased), Nobel laureate (for DNA double helix structure description).
Leslie Orgel
Leslie Orgel
Leslie Eleazer Orgel FRS was a British chemist.Born in London, England, Orgel received his B.A. in chemistry with first class honours from Oxford University in 1949...

(deceased) former Senior Fellow and Research Professor
Marguerite Vogt
Marguerite Vogt
Marguerite Vogt, MD was a cancer biologist and virologist. She was most noted for her research on polio and cancer at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.-Early life:...

(deceased), virologist.

External links

Photos of Salk Institute
CNN: Study reverses male infertility in mice
San Diego Consortium for Regenerative Medicine news release
Salk Institute Cancer Center at www.cancer.gov
Professor Chris Lamb - Daily Telegraph obituary

32.887151°N 117.246212°W

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Nobel laureates

Scientific activities

Architecture

Meaning

History

Training program

Administration

50th Anniversary Celebration

Distinguished faculty

See also

External links