Climate Change

To avoid widespread famine and malnutrition, the world must double current food production by 2050, and do so in the face of climate-driven pressures. That is why a key thrust of the Whitehead Initiative on Biology, Health, and Climate Change focuses on plant seeds, the source of more than two-thirds of calories currently consumed globally.

Climate change and economic development are increasing our risk of being infected by parasites and harmful viruses and bacteria. Whitehead Institute researchers are leveraging their expertise to better assess where pathogens will spread and evaluate their risk to humans.

Whitehead Institute researchers are studying how cells respond to stress, including dramatic shifts in temperature and in the availability of food and water. This knowledge is needed to develop approaches to protect human wellbeing in a changing climate.

The Whitehead Initiative on Biology, Health, and Climate Change (WIBHC), launched in 2021. It is a multidisciplinary program that explores the biological and health effects of climate change and that builds the foundations for biomedical and biotech interventions that could help prevent, mitigate, or treat detrimental impacts on human health. 

Whitehead Institute Member Mary Gehring was a featured presenter at a recent symposium sponsored by the MIT Climate Grand Challenges initiative.

Whitehead Institute establishes Whitehead Initiative on Biology, Health, and Climate Change

The new Whitehead Initiative on Biology, Health, and Climate Change (WIBHC) is designed both to explore climate change’s biological impacts and spark biotechnology interventions to counter its detrimental effects. Philanthropic funders have already stepped up to help underwrite two novel WIBHC research projects.

Whitehead Institute Member Jing-Ke Weng studies plant metabolism, the set of processes plants use to produce thousands of unique molecules, many of which have potent medicinal properties. The Weng lab is hunting for more of these molecules in the wild, and developing strategies to sustainably produce plant molecules already of interest at scale.

$3 Million grant will underwrite bioengineering of orphan crops as a method for enhancing global food security
 

A proposed project would provide a way to store carbon indefinitely in the tissues of specially engineered plants.