Cell Biology

Rare disease treatment and care relies on the combined efforts of clinicians, researchers, and families. Yet these people rarely find themselves in the same room. BridgeRD brought together stakeholders to address challenges of understanding, diagnosing, and treating rare diseases.

Whitehead Institute's Innovation Centers are a source of research services and much more, including potent collaborators and thought-partners. Graduate student Pushkal Sharma in Whitehead Institute Member Ankur Jain’s lab learned this firsthand by working with Heather Keys, the director of the Functional Genomics Platform, on research into small molecules called polyamines.

Iain Cheeseman and colleagues reveal the underappreciated role of single genes producing multiple proteins in atypical presentations of rare disease, and present case studies of affected patients through a collaboration with Boston Children’s Hospital. The findings help to identify genetic mutations that may contribute to rare diseases.

Chemotherapy-induced injury of organ tissue is the culprit, Whitehead Institute Founding Member Robert Weinberg and colleagues have found.

Jonathan Weissman and colleagues developed an optogenetic approach to study where in the cell proteins get made and used it to characterize two groups of proteins produced next to mitochondria. This could lead to new insights into mitochondrial function and dysfunction in disease.

Science in 60 breaks down the latest research at Whitehead Institute through one-minute explainers. In this video, Gayathri Muthukumar discusses how the outer mitochondrial membrane, which is a hub for signaling proteins, helps regulate mitochondrial functions.

Researchers at Whitehead Institute are developing models and approaches that capture more of the rich context in which biological processes are typically immersed, in order to learn more about them and their roles in health and disease. Learn more about how their work is revealing new insights that only become apparent when studying a process within the context of larger systems in which it operates.

Whitehead Institute Member Jonathan Weissman and colleagues, together with collaborators in Xiaowei Zhuang’s laboratory at Harvard University, developed an approach to collect multiple types of imaging and sequencing data from the same set of cells in animals, leading to new insights into liver biology in mice.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is part of everyday life and has innumerable uses — from summarizing a book or designing a poster, to recommending a TV show or parking your car. But how can AI be useful in biology? In this video narrated by Whitehead Institute Member Rick Young, learn how scientists are taking advantage of AI to greatly accelerate biological discoveries.