News

Dr. Susan Lindquist announced today that her service as President of the Whitehead Institute will end on or about November 1, 2004. Her announcement has been accepted with extreme regret by the Board of Directors.

Salmon fishermen trolling along the waters off Puget Sound in Washington are often witness to an awesome sight when they haul in their catch: salmon captured in nets that glow brilliantly against the nighttime sky.

Scientists have identified a surprising mechanical means by which cells store and release energy, a tightly wound jack-in-the-box mechanism rather than the chemical storehouse cells are known to use.

Whitehead Institute is pleased to announce the launch of its new public website. A major goal of the redesign was to create an attractive, user-friendly site while adhering to web standards to increase accessibility and to streamline site maintenance.

Matthew Tudor, postdoc in the lab of Whitehead Founding Member Rudolf Jaenisch, is among 15 awardees of research and education suport from The Rett Syndrome Research Foundation (RSRF) for 2004.

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.