In 1911, Peyton Rous, a Rockefeller physician, made a discovery with sweeping implications. Viruses can cause cancer. His findings laid the foundation for modern cancer biology. In 1966, Rous won a @nobelprize.org. #125YearsofRockefeller

Footage courtesy of NobelPrize.org

Rockefeller scientists, including @danielkronauer.bsky.social, Vanessa Ruta, Winrich Freiwald, Priya Rajasethupathy, and @erichjarvis.bsky.social, are learning what drives social behavior, and also trying to explain what happens when those roots falter.

🔗: https://bit.ly/47J2Q5h

Thermodynamic Signatures of Sensing and Amplification by Periodically Driven Hair-Cell Bundles By operating in different thermodynamic modes, hair cell bundles in the inner ear dynamically regulate power exchange with mechanical signals at the smallest biological scales.

The quieter the sound, the harder your hair bundles work to amplify it. An international team—including members of the Hudspeth lab at Rockefeller—shows that hair bundles sense, amplify, dissipate heat, or even act as tiny refrigerators.

The Rockefeller University » Symposium highlights SNFiRU's transition from incubator to engine Three years in, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Institute for Global Infectious Disease Research has matured into a working pipeline connecting basic science and emerging therapies.

Three years in, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Institute for Global Infectious Disease Research has matured into a working pipeline connecting basic science and emerging therapies:

Researchers in Charles Rice's lab at Rockefeller have created the first mouse model that closely mirrors what happens when people with hepatitis C develop liver cancer, allowing scientists to study how liver virus infection leads to cancer as well as to test treatments.

🔗: https://bit.ly/4dCzhGp

Disorder Drives One of Nature's Most Complex Machines | Quanta Magazine Every second, hundreds to thousands of molecules move through thousands of nuclear pores in each of your cells. A new high-definition view reveals the machine in action.

The NPC is far more than a molecular gate. “It’s a nexus for integration of information,” Rockefeller's Mike Rout says. “And I think if the cell had thoughts, that would be how it thinks of its nuclear pores.”

In @quantamagazine.bsky.social, by @yaseminsaplakoglu.bsky.social:

In 1928, Rebecca Lancefield discovered the M protein, the key to understanding how Streptococci-related diseases are acquired and spread. Over the next six decades, she classified thousands of strep strains. The Lancefield Grouping is still used today. #125YearsofRockefeller

Forbes 250: America's Greatest Innovators The Forbes Innovator 250: America's Greatest Innovators showcases the visionaries shaping our future. Find the full list of great minds and the mark they are leaving on our history.

Rockefeller's Jeff Friedman has been named a #Forbes250 Greatest Innovator! @forbes.com recognizes Friedman for his discovery of the weight-regulating hormone leptin, ushering in a new medical era.

Congratulations, Jeff!

Congrats to our own @danielkronauer.bsky.social, who has been selected as this year's winner of the Distinguished Naturalist Award from the American Society of Naturalists! Kronauer's work has shed light on the structure, function, and evolution of ant societies:

AAAS welcomes 449 scientists and engineers as Honorary Fellows | American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) AAAS announces its 2025 class of Honorary Fellows, includes 449 scientists, engineers and innovators across 24 AAAS disciplinary Sections.

Rockefeller's Gabriel Victora (@victora.bsky.social) has been elected as a #AAASFellow by @aaas.org! He is recognized for outstanding contributions in identifying how germinal centers refine antibody responses to infection and immunization. Congrats!

In a new @science.org study, Rockefeller’s @thefuchslab.bsky.social has identified distinct genetic sequences of long-term inflammatory memory that can lead to chronic inflammatory skin diseases such as #psoriasis.

🔗: https://bit.ly/4m57vV1

Machine learning for evolutionary genetics and molecular evolution Over the past decade, the rapid expansion of large-scale data and advances in computational power have allowed machine learning (ML), especially deep …

We wrote a review on using machine learning to study evolutionary genetics and molecular evolution in Trends in Genetics. It is open access—please take a look if you are interested in this topic www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... @cp-trendsgenetics.bsky.social

Microtubules have been viewed as passive structural supports, but a study from @hirofunabiki.bsky.social in @science.org Advances redefines microtubules as active regulators, helping to prevent abnormalities in the number of chromosomes, a hallmark of cancer.

🔗: https://bit.ly/4v8miCC

Zehao Zhang (@tommyz626.bsky.social), a graduate fellow in the Cao lab (@junyuecao.bsky.social) at Rockefeller, has been selected as a 2026 Schmidt Science Fellow for his work on how the immune system regulates itself and what causes it to fail. Congratulations!

A study from Rockefeller's @danielkronauer.bsky.social in @currentbiology.bsky.social finds that ants continually update their sense of nestmate identity and tolerance for outsiders, a discovery that opens the door to studying the neural circuits behind social recognition.

🔗:https://bit.ly/4sukQIR

Farewell winter, hello spring! 🌷 🐝 🌱

Thanks to Maureen Walter and Lori Chertoff for capturing these scenes on our beautiful campus.

Most mass spectrometers still analyze molecules one or just a few at a time. Now, a new MultiQ-IT prototype from Rockefeller's Brian Chait can cool, trap, filter, and redirect over a billion ions simultaneously.

🔗: https://bit.ly/47FWUd6

The latest issue of Rockefeller's #SeekMagazine is here! Feature stories cover new research that could vastly improve immunotherapy, the molecular machines vital to repairing our DNA, how brains are wired for communication and collaboration, and more: https://seek.rockefeller.edu/

Researchers in the former #AllisLab discovered that removing a specific region within a protein complex that regulates cell differentiation halts certain types of #cancer, including breast, prostate, blood, and skin cancers. @genesdev.bsky.social

How Leptin Became the Sexiest Thing in Science (Again) Thirty years after its discovery, scientists are eyeing leptin with renewed interest, for everything from weight loss drug cocktails to novel treatments for rare diseases and anorexia.

With researchers and Big Pharma now racing to improve blockbuster GLP-1 weight loss drugs, leptin—discovered by Rockefeller's Jeff Friedman—has resurfaced as a promising candidate.

Read more in this piece from @medscape.com:

Rockefeller's Michael Rout has spent decades studying the the nuclear pore complex.

We spoke with him about what makes this molecular machinery so remarkable and how this work could lead to new treatments for #cancer and #viraldiseases: www.rockefeller.edu/news/39142-t...

The Rockefeller University » Astronomer Chris Impey to receive 2026 Lewis Thomas Prize Chris Impey

Happening Monday! Don't miss astronomer Chris Impey receive the 2026 Lewis Thomas Prize, Rockefeller’s prestigious #sciencewriting award.

Impey has written books exploring topics from the origins of the universe to the search for extraterrestrial life.

A new tool from Rockefeller's @danmucida.bsky.social and @czbiohub.bsky.social allows scientists to closely follow newly activated T cells as they travel and change during an infection—it may inform future therapies for infection, cancer, and autoimmunity.

🔗: https://bit.ly/3NjZEWD

Vote now for Rockefeller!

Erich Jarvis and @darnelr.bsky.social's discovery of a protein that may have helped shape the emergence of spoken language has been selected for this year's #STATMadness competition from @statnews.com!

Look for Rockefeller in group 4: https://bit.ly/3FfcuRu

Huge congratulations to Gabriella Chua ( @gnlchua.bsky.social) and Andrea Terceros, 2026 recipients of the Weintraub Award! The award, given by @fredhutch.org, is considered among the most prestigious prizes for graduate students in the biosciences: https://bit.ly/4sfaxI9

Rockefeller's @junyuecao.bsky.social has created the most comprehensive atlas yet of how #aging affects thousands of cell subtypes. By profiling ~7 million individual cells, his lab has found which cells are most vulnerable to aging and what drives their decline: https://bit.ly/4bh9cdd

A 180 degree turn en route to crafting a scientific career that never goes stale - Nature Cancer Elaine Fuchs is renowned for her research in skin biology, stem cells and associated disorders, including cancers and inflammation, and has published over 380 articles. She received her PhD in biochem...

In this piece from @natcancer.nature.com, Rockefeller's Elaine Fuchs (@thefuchslab.bsky.social)—renowned for her research in skin biology, stem cells and associated disorders, including cancers and inflammation—recounts her scientific career.

New Strategies Aim at HIV's Last Strongholds A new study has overcome a long-standing challenge--how to isolate and study elusive HIV-infected cells called authentic reservoir clones (ARCs) that evade the immune system, making the disease difficult to cure.

A @nature.com study from @weillcornell.bsky.social and Rockefeller has overcome a long-standing challenge—how to isolate and study elusive #HIV-infected cells called authentic reservoir clones that evade the immune system, making the disease difficult to cure.

A new cell-free genomics framework from Rockefeller's Elizabeth Campbell in @cp-molcell.bsky.social isolates the primary impacts of transcription factors and establishes #tuberculosis as a model for understanding how genes are regulated.

🔗: https://bit.ly/4s8QScX

With supercomputers, algorithms, and troves of big data, the AI revolution is sparking new opportunities—and some challenges.

Rockefeller's Cori Bargmann, Nathaniel Heintz, and Jiankun Lyu offer their thoughts in this #SeekMagazine interview: