News

Whitehead Member Rudolf Jaenisch received today the 2009 Ernst Schering Prize, one of the most prestigious German awards for scientists.

Wounds trigger regeneration in planaria, a flatworm commonly studied for its regenerative capabilities. Until now, no molecular connection between wounding and the onset of the regeneration of an entire head or tail in planaria had been identified.

Some budding yeast species have the ability to silence genes using RNA interference (RNAi). Until now, most researchers thought that no budding yeasts possess the RNAi pathway because Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the protoypical model budding yeast does not.

The unique mechanism behind the evolutionary survival of the human Y chromosome may also be responsible for a range of sex disorders, from failed sperm production to sex reversal to Turner Syndrome.

Whitehead Institute researchers have shown definitively that mutations associated with prion diseases are sufficient to cause a transmissible neurodegenerative disease. Deciphering the origins of prion diseases could help farmers and policy-makers determine how best to control a prion disease outbreak in livestock and to prevent prion transmission to humans.

Whitehead Institute, along with the greater scientific research community, lost a great advocate and friend with the passing of Senator Edward M. Kennedy late Tuesday night. 

The tail ends of cellular protein templates, regions often thought relatively inconsequential, may actually play a role in preventing normal cells from becoming cancerous.

Newly appointed National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins said Monday he has contemplated the NIH’s piloting a program for exceptional young investigators modeled after Whitehead Institute’s Fellows program.

A multi-institutional team of Boston-area researchers has discovered a chemical that works in mice to kill the rare but aggressive cells within breast cancers that have the ability to seed new tumors.

A novel technique allows researchers to efficiently and precisely modify or introduce genes into the genomes of human embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, according to Whitehead scientists.