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Scientists have known for some time that mutations in a gene named MeCP2 lead to Rett syndrome, a major cause of mental retardation in girls. Now, a Whitehead Institute research team has provided evidence for the long accepted, but previously unproven theory that Rett syndrome is caused by loss of MeCP2 exclusively in neurons.

Whitehead biologist Steve Rozen has explored the family tree of the male-determing Y chromosome, looking for information about a genetic mutation that raises interesting questions about the evolution of the Y.

In the film “It’s a Wonderful Life,” an angel shows a suicidal George Bailey how his small town would have fared had he never been born. For years, scientists have conducted countless George Bailey experiments on genes, identifying their function by knocking them out with specially designed complex molecules, then observing what happens to the cell.

When Kathleen Collins joined the lab of Whitehead Institute Member Paul Matsudaira as a graduate student in the late 1980s, she felt anything was possible. “The enthusiasm there was contagious,” says Collins, now an associate professor at the University of California at Berkeley. “You were always aware of a driving motivation to do good science. And life’s too short not to do good science.”

The idea of self vs. nonself may sound more like an existential identity crisis than a question in cellular biology. But to Whitehead Institute Associate Member Andrew Chess, the concept could offer information about how cells tell each other apart, a cellular self-awareness that ensures the correct wiring of neurons in the brain.

Yeast and other fungi normally live on the outside of a plant, a nutrient-poor environment. Microorganisms can utilize wounds as opportunity for infection, thereby gaining access to the nutrient rich environment inside of the plant. Just how fungi identifies a wound on a plant, though, is a mystery.

The last few years have witnessed critical advances in breast cancer therapies. Still, the disease afflicts one in eight American women, and scientists have yet to develop a living model with which they can study the intricacies of human breast-tumor behavior. Now, a team in the lab of scientist Robert Weinberg at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research has successfully grafted human breast tissue into the mammary glands of mice.

Teradyne, Inc. founder and former Chairman of the MIT Corporation Alex d’Arbeloff has been named to the Board of Directors for Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. d’Arbeloff is presently a professor of practice at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and honorary chairman of the MIT Corporation.

In work that may lead to a better understanding of genetic diseases, researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT, Harvard University and Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research show that baker’s yeast was created hundreds of millions of years ago when its ancestor temporarily became a kind of super-organism with twice the usual number of chromosomes and increased potential to evolve.

In the late 1970s, Harvey Lodish co-taught the very first cell biology class at Massachusetts Institute of Technology – a course that existed in very few universities. As a result, he was in the bothersome position of having to teach without a text. But eventually, Lodish’s frustration led to action, and the result was one of the more successful textbooks in the $100-million industry of life sciences texts.