For anyone suffering from cystic fibrosis or AIDS, the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa is bad news. While the organism is found everywhere--including in sediment on the ocean floor--it can cause lung infections in those with weak immune systems.

Richard Andersen, Boswell Professor of Neuroscience, and Kai Zinn, professor of biology, both of the California Institute of Technology, have each received a 2005 McKnight Neuroscience of Brain Disorder Award.

In two separate awards from the Ellison Medical Foundation, two scientists from the California Institute of Technology are taking a much more scholarly approach to the ravages of aging. Harry Gray, a chemist, has been awarded $970,000 to reveal the structure of a protein and a peptide that underlie two age-related diseases, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, while biologist Alexander Varshavsky has been awarded $972,000 to conduct a systematic investigation of the genetics and biochemistry of aging.

By decoding signals coming from neurons, scientists at the California Institute of Technology have confirmed that an area of the brain known as the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vPF) is involved in the planning stages of movement, that instantaneous flicker of time when we contemplate moving a hand or other limb.

Although the immune system handles most of these disease-causing organisms and insults well, it does a poor job of suppressing the growth of tumors.

In a demonstration that holds promise for future advances in nanotechnology, California Institute of Technology computer scientists have succeeded in building a DNA crystal that computes as it grows. As the computation proceeds, it creates a triangular fractal pattern in the DNA crystal.

Nicotine is responsible for more than four million smoking-related deaths each year. Yet people still smoke. Why? One reason is the stranglehold of addiction, started when nicotine enhances the release of a neurotransmitter called dopamine, a chemical messenger that induces a feeling of pleasure. That's what smoking, presumably, is all about.

In response to the arduously slow progress in finding cures for AIDS and cancer, Caltech researchers are now investigating a promising new approach in the treatment of these diseases.

Biologist Erin Schuman is interested in how memories are formed--or forgotten. The landscape the professor of biology at the California Institute of Technology explores is the hippocampus, the part of the brain known to be crucial for memory in humans and other animals.

PASADENA, Calif. - "Sometimes letting nature tell you what's important is the better way to go," says Raymond Deshaies, an associate professor of biology at the California Institute of Technology. Deshaies is referring to new work to come out of his lab and the lab of Randall King at Harvard that defies conventional thinking--they've discovered a chemical that stops a key cell function, but, more importantly, suggests a new possible target within a cell, once thought to be untenable, for future therapeutic drugs.