Dr. Lei Wang, Assistant Professor in the Chemical Biology and Proteomics Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, will receive research funding from the foundation for the three year period 2008-2010.
Dr. Wang's proposed research, titled In vivo Visualization of Wnt Trafficking and Secretion in Caenorhabditis elegans, will genetically encode novel amino acids in C. elegans to enable live, in vivo visualization of Wnt proteins, allowing the secretion and movement of the protein to be determined in real time.
Dr. Dorian B. McGavern, Associate Professor in the Molecular and Integrative Neurosciences Department at The Scripps Research Institute, will receive research funding from the foundation for the three year period 2007-2009.
Dr. McGavern's proposed research, titled Neuronal Regulation of Adaptive Immunity, focuses on novel mechanisms by which neurons modulate immune function in the central nervous system, in particular the central role played by the major histocompatibility complex I.
Dr. Gentry Patrick, Assistant Professor of Biology at University of California, San Diego, will receive research funding from the foundation for the three year period 2006-2008.
Dr. Patrick's proposed research, titled The Role of the Ubiquitin Proteasome System (UPS) in Synaptic Plasticity and Neurodegenerative Disease, focuses on activity-mediated changes in the protein composition of mammalian synapses by the UPS, one of the major cellular pathways controlling protein turnover in eukaryotic cells.
Jeffrey A. Long, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Plant Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, will receive research funding from the foundation for the three year period 2005-2007.
Dr. Long's proposed research, titled Investigating the Connection Between Radial Polarity and Apical/Basal Polarity in Arabidopsis embryogenesis, focuses on uncovering the molecular basis and mechanisms by which cell differentiation occurs in plant embryogenesis.