News

Iain Cheeseman and colleagues reveal the underappreciated role of single genes producing multiple proteins in atypical presentations of rare disease, and present case studies of affected patients through a collaboration with Boston Children’s Hospital. The findings help to identify genetic mutations that may contribute to rare diseases.

Whitehead Institute is pleased to announce that Margaret Fala will be the Institute’s new Vice President for External Relations. She is an accomplished administrator with a strong track record in academic and healthcare fundraising.

Margaret Sand (1938-2025) was Whitehead Institute’s first head of HR, who helped build the faculty and remained a great friend of Institute throughout her life.

A recording of the event can be viewed here.

Most cells in our body live and die. But the germline, the cells that produce eggs and sperm, must carry on forever. How the germline successfully produces the next generation is a long-studied question. In our first installment of Research Threads, we follow the research of Whitehead Institute Member Yukiko Yamashita. Through a string of discoveries made over years, the Yamashita lab is teasing apart how the germline remains immortal.

Julia Wucherpfennig is a postdoc in Whitehead Institute Member and director Ruth Lehmann’s lab studying the relationship between Wolbachia bacteria, which infect many insects around the world, and their insect hosts. We sat down with Julia to learn more about her and her experiences in and out of the lab.

The Whitehead Innovation Initiative, funded through a generous gift by Michael and Victoria Chambers, explores the power of AI tools in biological research, while establishing Whitehead Institute as a leader in applying AI tools to biological questions—often with direct implications for human health. Here are some of the achievements from the program's first year.

Ly is one of six doctoral researchers worldwide to receive the distinction this year. The award celebrates his work uncovering how variants of known proteins—which have previously been overlooked by scientists as occasional accidents of gene expression—are regulated in cells, and how they shape human health and disease.

Whitehead Institute remembers its Founding Director, David Baltimore — the globally respected researcher, academic leader, and science policy visionary who guided the careers of generations of individual scientists and educators. 

The Whitehead Institute community is saddened by the passing of our dear friend Arthur Schleifer, Jr. Arthur was a longtime member of the Board of Directors and Finance Committee Chair.