News

Whitehead Institute Member Siniša Hrvatin and colleagues  show that inducing a prolonged state of dormancy in mice slows down progressive molecular changes associated with aging. The work also identifies decreased body temperature as a central regulator of this anti-aging effect.

Questions about biology, human health, and disease from area students answered by Whitehead Institute scientists in our Ask a Scientist series. Watch the latest Ask a Scientist video or learn more at BioNook.

Henry Kilgore is a postdoc in Whitehead Institute Member Richard Young’s lab working on understanding how protein chemistry influences where in the cell proteins localize. We sat down with Henry to learn more about him and his experiences in and out of the lab.

Our latest Research Highlights video features three exciting new findings from Whitehead Institute: New work from the Jaenisch lab helps explain bats' impressive resistance to viruses; researchers in the Young lab identify a common denominator underlying chronic disease states; and researchers in the Cheeseman lab identify precise regulatory mechanisms controlling the production of protein variants during mitosis.

Whitehead Institute Member David Page and colleagues identified underlying biological differences in how male and female heart cells generate energy. These differences could contribute to sex differences in heart disease incidence and outcomes.

The lab of Whitehead Institute Member Peter Reddien describes how planarians use the Delta-Notch signaling pathway to adjust the spatial pattern and relative numbers of neurons and glia at a given location. This allows the organisms to restore large portions of their nervous system following injury.

Whitehead Institute Member Richard Young and colleagues have created a machine learning model that can predict in which cellular compartments a protein will reside, generate proteins to reside in a desired compartment, and detect disease mutations that alter cellular compartments, with implications for understanding and remedying disease.  

The Whitehead Institute Board of Directors has elected Maren Winnick, a leader in biopharma investment banking, for a six-year term beginning January 1, 2025. 

Andy Tseng will join the Institute on January 13, 2025 as Director of Information Technology (IT) and Digital Strategy for Whitehead Institute. In that role, he will oversee the Institute's IT operations and digital initiatives, and will help Whitehead scientists and staff leverage advanced AI technologies and innovative IT solutions to accelerate scientific discovery while ensuring data security and privacy.

Whitehead Institute Member Rudolf Jaenisch and colleagues took an interdisciplinary approach to develop a new stem cell-derived model of vascular cells, with which they identified how SARS-CoV-2 can cause vascular complications such as blood clots and strokes.