Why does the immune system target one particular molecular feature over another, and how does that selection affect the evolution of cancer and viruses? Benjamin Greenbaum, Long-term Member (2008–13) in the School of Natural Sciences, highlights his work on the theory of self versus non-self discrimination.
In the summer of 1968, a young, newly minted assistant professor
moved from a postdoctoral position at Caltech to Princeton
University. Schooled and trained over the previous seven years in
the reductionist approaches of Watson and Cricks’ molecular...
All of us who have watched as a friend or relative has
disappeared into the fog of Alzheimer’s arrive at the same truth.
Although we recognize people by their visual appearance, what we
really are as individual humans is determined by how our
brains...
Autism is a common childhood neurodevelopmental disorder
affecting one in 180 children. It is characterized by impaired
social interaction and communication, and by restricted interests
and repetitive behavior. Autism is a complex disease...
On March 28, 2009, a nine-year-old girl visited a clinic near
San Diego with a fever and cough. Similar cases of febrile
respiratory illness followed within the next two weeks in several
places in California and Texas. At the same time, Mexican...
Influenza viruses are unusual because we can become infected by
a similar virus almost every year during our lifetime and
occasionally there are worldwide pandemics that can cause many
fatalities. Why does our usually excellent immune system fail
us...
Type A influenza viruses are the only influenza viruses known to
have caused human pandemics. The steady advance of one such virus,
influenza A(H5N1),
commonly known as avian flu, has brought with it fears of a new
pandemic. To date, no confirmed...
Discoveries in biology historically have been the province of
experimentalists. But advances during the past decade in sequencing
human and other genomes have brought forth a vast amount of data
that has led to the nascent but burgeoning field...
