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When a protein misfolds, the results can be disastrous. An incorrect change in the molecule’s shape can lead to diseases including Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s. But scientists have discovered that misfolded proteins can have a positive side in yeast.

Discovery of the mTOR protein and the role it plays in cell growth, a process often linked to diseases such as cancer, was part serendipity and part good detective work. And like any good whodunit, the mTOR story wouldn’t be complete without an unexpected twist.

Nature can reset the clock in certain types of cancer and reverse many of the elements responsible for causing malignancy, reports a research team led by Whitehead Institute Member Rudolf Jaenisch, in collaboration with Lynda Chin from Dana Farber Cancer Institute. The team demonstrated this by successfully cloning mice from an advanced melanoma cell.

Whitehead Institute Director Susan Lindquist has been elected a member of Deutsche Akademie Der Naturforscher Leopoldina, the oldest scientific academy in Germany.

A new microscope at the Whitehead/MIT Bioimaging Center will show the smallest molecules at near-atomic scale. Placing the microscope in a climate-controlled room helps stabilize easily perturbed electrons, thus improving image quality.

For years, scientists have studied the human genome one gene at a time. Today, their view is more global, a vantage point that offers a new look at how genes and proteins work together to produce living cells and organisms.

For stem cell research, this was a “Who’s Who?” gathering. Those taking the stage at United Nations headquarters in New York included Whitehead Founding Member Rudolf Jaenisch; Douglas Melton of Harvard University; Roslin Institute’s Ian Wilmut, the Scottish embryologist who cloned Dolly; and Seoul National University’s Shin Yong Moon, who culled embryonic stem cells from the cloned human blastocyst earlier this year.

Obesity researchers made an intriguing discovery in 2001 when they found that large doses of a particular fat-cell protein, adiponectin, caused obese mice to lose weight.

Scientists know a great deal about how tumors originate and develop, but relatively little about how cancer manages to metastasize and invade distant tissues and organs.

Whitehead Member Robert Weinberg is one of five researchers honored with the 2004 Prince of Asturias Award for Scientific and Technical Research, the Prince of Asturias Foundation announced this week in Oviedo, Spain.