News

The Whitehead Institute Board of Directors has elected Sally Kornbluth, president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), to a six-year term.

Researchers in Whitehead Institute Member Richard Young’s lab and colleagues at MIT show that a machine learning model can predict which subcellular compartments a drug will concentrate in based on its chemical features. This could be used to design safer and more effective drugs, and to understand how subcellular compartments govern diverse biochemical processes.

Whitehead Institute remembers William Pounds, an emeritus member of the Whitehead Institute board of directors and emeritus dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Please join us on Friday, September 22 as we celebrate the establishment of the David Baltimore Chair in Biomedical Research.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has selected Whitehead Institute postdoctoral researcher Maiko Kitaoka as a Hanna H. Gray Fellow. As one of 25 scientists selected for the prestigious appointment this year, Kitaoka will receive funding that supports her postdoctoral training and may continue into her early career year as independent faculty.

Mark Greenwood is a postdoc in Whitehead Institute Member Pulin Li’s lab studying hormone signaling. We sat down with Mark to learn more about him and his experiences in and out of the lab.

Whitehead Institute Founding Member Rudolf Jaenisch and colleagues found that SARS-Cov-2 can infect sensory neurons and alter their gene expression. This may help to explain the peripheral nervous system symptoms associated with Covid-19, such as loss of smell.

Whitehead Institute Member Olivia Corradin and colleagues have developed a system to find patterns in seemingly random differences between the genomes of people affected and unaffected by a disease. They can use these patterns to identify genes that contribute to complex diseases and disorders, such as opioid use disorder.

Research from Whitehead Institute Member Yukiko Yamashita’s lab finds that a retrotransposon, a genetic element often thought of as a parasite, actually plays an important role in rejuvenating an important region of DNA, preserving fertility in flies.