News

Scientists have long struggled for details on how the immune system responds to complex pathogens such as the parasite Toxoplasma gondii and herpes viruses. Adapting an existing technology, researchers have pinpointed precise molecular targets that these pathogens present to signal T cells.

A new quantitative model accurately predicts the three-dimensional forces involved in creating and maintaining certain biological membranes.

In yeast, a protein-misfolding mechanism can reveal hidden genetic variations and thus generate new phenotypes that may increase cell survival. Researchers now have demonstrated that when yeast cells are stressed, this mechanism is triggered much more often.

Whitehead Member and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator Susan Lindquist has been awarded a Collaborative Innovation Award, part of a four year, $40 million pilot project launched by the HHMI.

Huntington’s disease is caused by misfolded and clumped proteins that interfere with the cell’s protein quality control, which may lead to cellular toxicity and eventually cell death.

A previously undescribed molecular mechanism for changing the shape of cell sheets is demonstrated in the embryonic brain, using the zebrafish model. This process, termed "basal constriction", is likely to occur in different structures during development in all animals.

A new technique lets researchers, for the first time, look at single white blood cells and measure specific characteristics of the set of antibodies they produce when the body is under attack.

Whitehead Director David C. Page has been elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM), one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine.

Whitesell has been chosen to participate in Johnson & Johnson’s Focused Funding Program.

MicroRNAs and piRNAs, two classes of small RNAs that regulate genes, have been discovered within diverse animal lineages, implying that they have been present since the ancestor of all animals (about a billion years ago).