Arabidopsis protein SRF3 ends an iron-draining immune response by moving into the cell
Salk researchers report that the protein SRF3 both restores iron balance after a microbial attack and keeps a plant's immune response calibrated. The experiments started in Arabidopsis, a laboratory stand-in for crops such as wheat or corn, so the breeding payoff its authors describe is still a prospect.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence50
Doctors safely added the vitamin D drug paricalcitol to chemotherapy in a small pancreatic cancer trial
Dana-Farber researchers safely combined paricalcitol, an approved vitamin D drug, with chemotherapy in a small trial in metastatic pancreatic cancer. Its strongest survival signal came in tumours rich in the vitamin D receptor, a possible way to choose patients that a larger trial still has to test.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+40
- Incentives65
- Confidence50
Standard gene models leave out short open reading frames, so a Salk team built a search database that includes them and pointed it at existing proteomics data from postmortem frontal cortex samples.
Reality
- Evidence62
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives30
- Confidence60
Salk pins lingering fear in mice on a zone between the amygdala and striatum
Salk researchers recorded and then manipulated the amygdalostriatal transition zone in freely moving mice, and report in Neuron that dopamine-expressing neurons there are needed to mount a fear response.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+35
- Incentives60
- Confidence52
Salk takes a one-tonne-per-hectare soybean carbon estimate out of the lab and into Illinois
The Salk Institute has $18 million from the Bezos Earth Fund to measure in four states' fields what its lab work estimated at one metric ton of carbon dioxide per hectare a year, with the first results due this fall.
Reality
- Evidence38
- Adoption8
- Hype gap+16
- Incentives68
- Confidence52
A mitochondrial RNA leak explains how chronic interferon starts helping melanoma tumors grow
In Science, a Salk Institute team reports that melanoma cells held in type II interferon spill double-stranded mitochondrial RNA, setting off a type I response that raises COX2 and PGE2, and those cells grew tumors faster in mice.
Reality
- Evidence62
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+18
- Incentives68
- Confidence58
A simulated maternal flu hypermethylates the sites Tbr1 needs to bind in fetal mouse cortex
Salk's mouse model left the Tbr1 protein abundant and put methyl tags on the DNA it has to land on. Deep-layer neurons developed poorly, and the electrophysiological consequences were still there in adulthood.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+25
- Incentives70
- Confidence50
Salk's fly driver lines narrow octopamine access to single pairs of neurons
A modulator credited with both raising and lowering aggression in flies can now be probed one cell type at a time, some types as small as a pair of neurons, moving the story from chemical to cellular resolution.
Reality
- Evidence62
- Adoption15
- Hype gap+8
- Incentives55
- Confidence52