News

Kutay Deniz Atabay is a postdoc in Whitehead Institute Member Peter Reddien’s lab investigating regeneration, including how neuronal circuits regenerate in various organisms including planarians, a type of flatworm. We sat down with Atabay to learn more about him and his experiences in and out of the lab.

Whitehead Institute’s science program for middle schoolers, Expedition: Bio, took place online this year but still managed to give students lots of hands-on science experience.

On this episode of AudioHelicase podcast, Whitehead Fellow Olivia Corradin talked about investigating the genetic underpinnings of diseases through a new technique she developed, the outside variant approach. Applying the method to study the autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis (MS), Corradin and colleagues identified a role for a cell type in the brain in MS, offering a new way of understanding the disease. 

Whitehead Institute’s physician-scientists, researchers who also practice medicine, use their unusual position to act as conduits between lab and clinic.

Caroline Lewis, director of the Metabolite Profiling Core Facility, is excited about the core’s new instrument. Her team helps Whitehead Institute researchers study chemicals produced in cellular reactions, known as metabolites. These compounds greatly outnumber larger molecules in the cell such as proteins — and many of them have not even been identified.

Researchers in the lab of Whitehead Institute Member David Sabatini, identify a key molecule that signals to the cell’s growth-triggering complex mTORC1 when there is sugar to be had, leading to a metabolic response.

New discoveries about the disruption of condensates in the neurodevelopmental disorder Rett syndrome provide insights into how cells compartmentalize chromosomes as well as new potential paths for therapies.

A Q&A with Whitehead Institute’s new director & board chair