Stem Cells

Click here to view the latest multimedia piece in the Unusual Labmates series and learn more about how researchers at Whitehead Institute are using bat biology to study questions about viral infection, immunity, cold tolerance, and more. 

Bats rarely get sick from deadly viruses like Ebola and Nipah despite carrying them. Now, Whitehead Institute Founding Member Rudolf Jaenisch and colleagues have found that while the SARS-CoV-2 virus can enter bat cells, the innate immune system prevents it from replicating and hijacking the cell's machinery.

Whitehead Institute Member Rudolf Jaenisch and colleagues found that Rett Syndrome can cause significant mitochondrial dysfunction in astrocytes, a brain cell type that supports neurons, and in neurons that later acquire these mitochondria.

In Parkinson’s disease, clumps of sticky proteins trigger inflammation in the brain, leading to neuronal death. Whitehead Institute’s Founding Member Rudolf Jaenisch and colleagues have now found that a mutation causing these proteins to misfold and become sticky can also turn the brain’s immune cells from friends to foes, possibly accelerating the progression of the disease.

Whitehead Institute Founding Member Rudolf Jaenisch and colleagues developed an approach to isolate and analyze phagosomes, which are an important organelle in microglia, a type of immune cell found in the brain. Microglia are involved in brain development, as well as neurodegeneration, brain cancer, and more so understanding their biology has many potential implications.

Whitehead Institute Member Jonathan Weissman and collaborators developed a tool to reconstruct the family trees and individual states of cells in humans, revealing how blood cell production changes in old age.

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.