News

Whitehead Institute Member Iain Cheeseman and colleagues found that cells not only make many variants of known proteins, but that they switch between making different variants to tailor protein function during cell division.

Whitehead Institute Member David Page and colleagues revisit the boundary of the pseudoautosomal region (PAR)—a critical region on the X and Y chromosomes where they exchange genetic information during sperm production—after outside research challenged its established location.

Bats rarely get sick from deadly viruses like Ebola and Nipah despite carrying them. Now, Whitehead Institute Founding Member Rudolf Jaenisch and colleagues have found that while the SARS-CoV-2 virus can enter bat cells, the innate immune system prevents it from replicating and hijacking the cell's machinery.

Whitehead Fellow Aditya Raguram has received a 2024 NIH Director’s Early Independence Award. The prestigious funding award will support his work developing cell-derived bioparticles into safe and efficient vehicles for delivering therapeutic proteins into cells. 

Jaspreet Sandhu is a postdoc in Whitehead Institute Member Jonathan Weissman’s lab studying how the genetics of individual cells determine their behaviors within the liver. He is also a gastroenterologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. We sat down with Jaspreet to learn more about him and his experiences in and out of the lab.

Whitehead Institute has appointed Na Sun, a 2024 PhD graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as the inaugural AI Fellow within the Whitehead Fellows Program.

Valhalla Fellow Lindsey Backman explains what the microbiome is and the roles that different members of our microbiomes play in health and disease. She also discusses how her lab studies adaptations that some microbes have evolved to tolerate oxygen-containing environments, and how researchers may be able to use what she learns to create better antibiotics and probiotics.

In order for researchers to understand the biology of living organisms, they must consider what is happening across the size scale. Interactions between molecules drive interactions between cells that affect traits and behaviors. Experiences and decisions made by the organism can lead to changes at the cellular and molecular level. In order to understand the full picture, Whitehead Institute researchers study everything from molecules to cells to whole organisms.

Researchers at Whitehead Institute are employing cutting-edge techniques that combine layers of data — from the function of individual genes to the interactions of all molecules within a living organism — to investigate biological phenomena with unprecedented depth and breadth. Their efforts are yielding a richer understanding of the mechanisms involved in health and disease.

Whitehead Institute Member Rudolf Jaenisch and colleagues found that Rett Syndrome can cause significant mitochondrial dysfunction in astrocytes, a brain cell type that supports neurons, and in neurons that later acquire these mitochondria.