The Salk Institute is honored to welcome two new faculty with the rank of full professor, both of whom are highly respected and accomplished leaders in their fields. Susan Kaech and Gerald Shadel will inspire fresh collaborations and bring experienced perspectives to bear on Salk's approaches to health and disease.  The researchers were hired through the Rockstar Fund, founded in honor of Salk Board Chair Emeritus Irwin Jacobs to recruit high-profile scientists to the Institute. Kaech was recruited thanks to a grant from the Nomis Foundation, designated for a senior investigator to lead the Nomis Center at Salk. 

Kaech will serve as director of the Nomis Center for Immunobiology and Microbial Pathogenesis to further studies of the immune system, and Shadel will join the Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory where he will continue his research into the mechanisms of aging.

One of the longstanding mysteries about plants is how they grow, because the rigid external cell wall that gives them structural support also constrains cells from expanding. Wolfgang Busch and collaborators discovered a fluorescent dye that, paired with other imaging techniques, reveals root growth to be influenced by the plant hormone auxin. Insights into auxin could inform the production of faster-growing crops or help mitigate such effects of climate change as drought or early flowering.

 

From left: Santosh Satbhai and Wolfgang Busch

Just like people, plants need iron to grow and stay healthy. But some plants are better at getting this essential nutrient from the soil than others. Now, a study led by Wolfgang Busch has found that variants of a single gene can largely determine a plant's ability to thrive in environments where iron is scarce.