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In this study, the Sánchez Alvarado Lab shows that whole-body regeneration involves transcriptional changes in cells from all three germ layers (muscle, epidermis, and intestine) of the body, and that tissue from areas distant from, as well as nearby to the site of injury, contribute to the process of regeneration.

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Stowers Institute Co-Founder Virginia Stowers, 1930-2021

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The Piotrowski Lab has reported newly identified invasive ionocytes in the sensory organs of larval and adult zebrafish fish that may provide clues to how sensory organs continue to function in changing environments.

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Since the beginning of the pandemic, a loss of smell has emerged as one of the telltale signs of COVID-19.

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Researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, in collaboration with colleagues at Stanford University and Technical University of Munich have developed advanced explainable artificial intelligence (AI) in a technical tour de force to decipher regulatory instructions encoded in DNA. In a report published online February 18, 2021, in Nature Genetics, the team found that a neural network trained on high-resolution maps of protein-DNA interactions can uncover subtle DNA sequence patterns throughout the genome and provide a deeper understanding of how these sequences are organized to regulate genes.

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What if the degenerative eye conditions that lead to glaucoma, corneal dystrophy, and cataracts could be detected and treated before vision is impaired? Recent findings from the lab of Investigator Ting Xie, PhD, at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research point to the ciliary body as a key to unlocking this possibility.

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In a new study, researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have identified a handful of variations in an amino acid sequence critical for retaining the ancestral function of a gene over the course of 600 million years of evolution.

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It can be hard to dispute the common adage ‘survival of the fittest’. After all, “most of the genes in the genome are there because they’re doing something good,” says Sarah Zanders, PhD, assistant investigator at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research. But, she says, “others are just there because they’ve figured out a way to be there.”

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Researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Missouri, and the Andalusian Center of Developmental Biology at Pablo de Olavide University in Seville, Spain, have harnessed the technology to target gene messages (messenger RNA) involved in early vertebrate development.

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Cavefish may not seem like a big deal. They’re small, they live in tucked away places humans rarely go, and they’re common enough that you can find them on every continent except Antarctica. But researchers from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research see them as a potential way to understand more about the rise in autoimmune diseases in humans.

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Scientists at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have shown that a dysfunctional placenta can play a previously unrecognized role during the earliest stages of development in mouse models of Cornelia de Lange syndrome. People with this rare genetic disorder often harbor mutations in cohesins, ring-like proteins that help DNA organize and repair itself.

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The Stowers Institute for Medical Research is pleased to announce that Joan Weliky Conaway, PhD, a Stowers Investigator since 2001, has been elected a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for her distinguished and continuing achievements in original scientific research. The recognition reflects the exceptional productivity and impact of the research program co-led by Conaway and her lifelong collaborator and husband Ron Conaway, PhD.

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Drug resistance is a major obstacle in cancer treatment—leading to relapse for many patients. In a new study, published online April 20, 2020, in Nature Cell Biology, researchers from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Children’s Mercy Kansas City, and The University of Kansas Cancer Center report on a promising new strategy to overcome drug resistance in leukemia, using targeted doses of the widely-used chemotherapy drug doxorubicin.

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Researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have fine-tuned a method to pinpoint surfaces within large multi-protein complexes that are close to, and likely to be directly interacting with, one another.

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For the first time, scientists from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research and collaborators have described the structure of an endogenously sourced, functioning neuronal amyloid at atomic resolution. The amyloid is composed of self-aggregated Orb2, the fruit fly version of the mRNA-binding cytoplasmic polyadenylation element-binding (CPEB) protein, which has been linked to long-term memory storage. The results of this work, published online March 13, 2020, in Science, have some very interesting implications.

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Researchers from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have uncovered new details about several proteins implicated in tumor growth and metastasis, opening a potential avenue for the development of treatments for diseases such as breast cancer.

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Small-cell clones in proliferating epithelia – tissues that line all body surfaces – organize very differently than their normal-sized counterparts, according to a recent study from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research. Published online September 5, 2019, in Developmental Cell, these findings from the laboratory of Matthew Gibson, PhD, may contribute to a better understanding of how some human diseases progress.

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This October, the Stowers Institute for Medical Research will host a session of the EMBO Laboratory Leadership for Group Leaders Course at its campus in Kansas City, Missouri.

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KANSAS CITY, MO—Thanks to super-resolution microscopy, scientists have now been able to unambiguously identify physical associations between human chromosomes. The findings have brought to light a new understanding to a curious observation first made more than 50 years ago. The Stowers Institute for Medical Research scientists probed these physical connections between five of the chromosomes in the human karyotype in a report recently published online in the Journal of Cell Biology.

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Researchers from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have discovered a new function of ribosomes in human cells that may show the protein-making particle’s role in destroying healthy mRNAs, the messages that decode DNA into protein.

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Researchers from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have created a novel way to define individual protein associations in a quick, efficient, and informative way. These findings, published in the March 8, 2019, issue of Nature Communications, show how the topological scoring (TopS) algorithm, created by Stowers researchers, can – by combining data sets – identify proteins that come together.

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New research from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research has identified a backup for an important biological system – the hematopoietic system, whose adult stem cells constantly replenish the body’s blood supply.

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Researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have identified "navigator" neurons that are key to setting up connections in the system responsible for the sense of smell. The new study builds on a breakthrough 2014 report from the laboratory of Stowers Investigator Ron Yu, Ph.D., which showed a critical period in olfactory wiring using mice as a model system.

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Researchers from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have opened a window on another piece of evolutionary biology. They have found that Hox genes, which are key regulators of the way the bodies of bilaterally symmetrical animals form, also play a role in controlling the radially symmetric body plan of the starlet sea anemone, Nematostella vectensis.

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Researchers from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research and collaborators have identified a way to expand blood-forming, adult stem cells from human umbilical cord blood (hUCB).

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Motivated by a desire to better understand the molecular circuitry underlying neuroblastoma and limitations of current methods for predicting disease progression and outcome, researchers from the Kulesa Lab at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research and collaborators at the University of Michigan and Oxford University set out to construct a logic-based model incorporating information about developmental signaling pathways implicated in the disease.

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Scientists at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have identified a physical basis for the spread of corrupted proteins known as prions inside cells. Their research findings are reported in the July 5, 2018, issue of the scientific journal Molecular Cell.

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Researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have captured the one cell that is capable of regenerating an entire organism.

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New research from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research reveals that a DNA regulatory element within the Hoxb cluster globally mediates signals to the majority of Hoxb genes to control their expression in blood-forming stem cells.

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The Stowers Institute for Medical Research is pleased to announce that Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado, Ph.D., a Stowers and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator, has been elected a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for his distinguished and continuing achievements in original scientific research.

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In a study published online in the journal eLife, the researchers identified a molecular signature of approximately 1300 genes differentially expressed in an aggressive subset of migrating neural crest cells termed as “trailblazers” in a vertebrate model system of development. These genes appear to play a critical role in migration and may be part of a broader molecular signature of cell invasion in a number of phenomena.

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Researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have solved the three-dimensional structure of a complex that is essential for the correct sorting of chromosomes into eggs and sperm during reproductive cell division or meiosis.

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Research from the Stowers Institute provides evidence suggesting that cancer cells might streamline their genomes in order to proliferate more easily. The study, conducted in both human and mouse cells, shows that cancer genomes lose copies of repetitive sequences known as ribosomal DNA. While downsizing might enable these cells to replicate faster, it also seems to render them less able to withstand DNA damage.

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Researchers from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in collaboration with Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center researchers have identified an unprecedented genetic survival strategy that would be right at home in an Agatha Christie murder mystery novel.

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In a study published in the June 5, 2017, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Stowers scientists Bony De Kumar, Ph.D., and Robb Krumlauf, Ph.D., provide evidence of direct cross-regulatory feedback, or cross-talk, between Nanog and Hox genes.

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Stop-and-go traffic is typically a source of frustration, an unneccesary hold-up on the path from point A to point B. But when it comes to the molecular machinery that copies our DNA into RNA, a stop right at the beginning of the path may actually be helpful. Recent research from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research shows that this stop prevents another machine from immediately following the first, presumably to better control the traffic and avoid later collisions.

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Proteins, those basic components of cells and tissues, carry out many biological functions by working with partners in networks. The dynamic nature of these networks – where proteins interact with different partners at different times and in different cellular environments – can present a challenge to scientists who study them.

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A new report from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research chronicles the embryonic origins of planaria, providing new insight into the animal's remarkable regenerative abilities.

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The complex process regulating gene expression is often compared to following a recipe. Miss a genetic ingredient, or add it in the wrong order, and you could have a disaster on your hands.

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How do you remember what happened today in the weeks and months that follow? Researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have answered a piece of that question in a recent study.

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Researchers at the Stowers Institute have established a definitive link between the makeup of the microbiome, the host immune response, and an organism’s ability to heal itself.

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Researchers at the Stowers Institute have identified a key molecule that directs stem cells in the planarian flatworm to make copies of themselves.

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Scientists at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have reported a detailed description of how function-impairing mutations in polr1c and polr1d genes cause Treacher Collins syndrome (TCS), a rare congenital craniofacial development disorder that affects an estimated 1 in 50,000 live births.

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The Stowers Institute for Medical Research is pleased to announce that Scientific Director and Investigator Robert Krumlauf, Ph.D., has been elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for his distinguished and continuing achievements in original scientific research.

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For the first time, researchers at the Stowers Institute have mapped where recombination occurs across the whole genome of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster after a single round of meiosis.