Cell Renewal

Our researchers seek to understand how our cells and tissues renew and replenish themselves. They investigate how the molecules and specialized structures inside of our cells work in concert with each other, in a precisely choreographed dance, to ensure that biological processes happen when and how they should.

 

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Colorful blobs surrounded by fibers.
Our Focus

Whitehead Institute scientists are studying how an organism performs the fundamental tasks of life — replenishing its cells and tissues – through cell division, an intricate process, every aspect of which must be executed correctly for normal growth and development. Our bodies each began as one cell that had to divide an astounding number of times to create the roughly 30 trillion cells that make up a human body--and billions of these cells continue to divide every day. By identifying the molecules involved in cell renewal, and determining how cells carry out the process, our researchers are improving our understanding of cell renewal in normal development and in turn how it may go awry in diseases like cancer.

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Illustration of scientist cutting a cell in half with a pizza cutter
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Illustration of a hang holding a purple cell.

Steven Lee

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Normal cells transformed into cancerous ones
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Cells as small bright spots with green centers and spiky magenta circumferences.

Kuan Chung Su/ Whitehead Institute

Major Achievements
Mapping the centromere

Whitehead Institute Member Iain Cheeseman determined the structure of the centromere, a cellular component essential for chromosome replication. 

Deciphering condensate biology

Whitehead Institute Member Richard Young has made fundamental discoveries on the function and regulatory role of phase-separated condensates in cells. 

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