News

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.

Christoph Gäbelein is a postdoc in Whitehead Institute Director Ruth Lehmann’s lab studying how oocytes, which are immature egg cells, avoid the effects of aging during their long dormancies. We sat down with Christoph to learn more about him and his experiences in and out of the lab.

Researchers across Whitehead Institute and Massachusetts Institute of Technology joined faculty from Boston Children’s Hospital for a research matchmaking event, aiming to foster collaboration in fields ranging from rare disease and immunology to cancer.

Chronic diseases such as diabetes are on the rise and are costly and challenging to treat. Whitehead Institute Member Richard Young and colleagues have discovered a common denominator driving these diverse diseases, which may prove to be a promising therapeutic target: proteolethargy, or reduced protein mobility, in the presence of oxidative stress.