Epigenetics

Maintaining food security in the face of climate change is a complex, multifaceted problem of global importance, and so researchers are tackling it from many different angles. Whitehead Institute Member Mary Gehring is starting to work on ways to engineer crops that can better survive the effects of climate change and continue to produce high yields with high nutritional value.

Cancer is a disease, or set of diseases, in which abnormal cells in the body experience uncontrolled growth. Cancer biology is complex, with many potential factors contributing to a given cancer’s development and outcome. Researchers at Whitehead Institute are investigating the fundamental biology of cancer cells and have helped drive steady advances in biomedicine’s understanding of cancer, contributing to innovative strategies in both diagnosis and therapy.

Whitehead Institute researchers have discovered that particular signaling pathways, which transmit environmental cues and effect changes in gene expression, rely on phase-separated condensates to find, occupy, and activate the right genes in each cell type

Researchers have found that certain epigenetic changes in mice that appear to be inherited by offspring can lead to increased cancer rates