Stem Cells

Whitehead Institute Member Yukiko Yamashita and colleagues show that stem cells play a special role in maintaining ribosomal DNA, which they do by dividing asymmetrically.

Marine Krzisch is a postdoc in Whitehead Institute Member Rudolf Jaenisch’s lab who works on making better models with which to study neurological diseases. We sat down with Marine to learn more about her and her experiences in and out of the lab.

A study on asymmetric cell division in fruit fly stem cells took an unexpected twist, revealing how a dividing stem cell “chooses” which of its daughters receives more ribosomal DNA in order to pass on enough of these essential genes to subsequent generations.

Researchers in the lab of Whitehead Institute Founding Member Rudolf Jaenisch designed a way to turn human pluripotent stem cells into insulin-resistant fat cells, providing a useful model for studying type 2 diabetes, a complex and slow-to-onset disease. 

Researchers in Whitehead Institute Director Ruth Lehmann’s lab have discovered that swarm cells, a previously enigmatic cell type, help primordial germ cells time their transformation during development so that the ovary can successfully assemble for egg production. 

Researchers at Whitehead Institute propose a new model for how the stem cells in aquatic worms called planarians commit to a specific fate. Instead of a long, slow process that occurs over many generations, the researchers suggest that the transition from “blank” stem cells to specialized cells could happen in a single division.

Whitehead Institute Director Ruth Lehmann is the co-recipient of the 2020 Francis Amory Prize, awarded by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in recognition of outstanding achievements in medicine and reproductive physiology.

A new experimental system shows how insulin-producing beta cells react under autoimmune attack during type 1 diabetes; the results could lead to better treatments.