News

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.

Research by Whitehead Institute scientists reveals new ways small molecule therapeutics are metabolized and provides techniques to refine existing treatments

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.

Our 2021 Annual Report is filled with highlights from the year — both scientific and otherwise. 

Whitehead Institute has three contenders in the starting round of STAT Madness 2022, STAT’s March Madness-style competition of the year’s top biomedical research discoveries. 

Han Tran is a Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellow in Whitehead Institute Director Ruth Lehmann’s lab studying endoplasmic reticulum biology in the context of the cells that make eggs and sperm. We sat down with Tran to learn more about her and her experiences in and out of the lab.

Whitehead Institute Director Ruth Lehmann has been awarded the 2022 Gruber Genetics Prize – one of the most prestigious recognitions in the field of genetics – along with fellow developmental biologists James Priess of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Geraldine Seydoux of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Whitehead Institute scientists taking on a research challenge outside of their area of expertise use an open science approach to get outside input.