Cell Renewal

How do cells decide how long to pause division after they detect errors? Whitehead Institute Member Iain Cheeseman and colleagues identified that the key player is a previously undiscovered protein that was hiding in plain sight. Read more and also check out our Behind the Science podcast looking at the unexpected nature of this discovery.

Clumps of abnormal RNA are known to build up in some neurological disorders including Huntington’s disease and ALS. New research from Whitehead Institute Member Ankur Jain shows that these clumps can form outside of the cell’s nucleus, becoming more toxic to cells.

Whitehead-Broad team harnesses new pooled, image-based screening method to probe the functions of over 5,000 essential genes in human cells.

A new study reveals that the protein MTCH2, which is essential in a variety of cellular processes, is responsible for shuttling various other proteins into the membrane of mitochondria. The finding could have implications for cancer treatments and provides insight into a variety of MTCH2-linked conditions.

A new paper from the lab of Whitehead Institute Director Ruth Lehmann reveals how primordial germ cells in flies migrate from one end of an embryo to the other during development. The work could have implications for how scientists study germ cells in vivo, as well as other motile cells such as cancer cells.

Researchers at Whitehead Institute uncover the 3-D structure of GATOR2, a protein complex that plays a critical role in a signaling pathway that regulates cell growth.

Whitehead Institute researchers find a role for condensates, droplets involved in corralling proteins inside of cells, in disease. They provide a catalog of disease-causing mutations that likely affect condensates as a resource for future research.

Whitehead Institute scientists taking on a research challenge outside of their area of expertise use an open science approach to get outside input.

New research from Whitehead Institute Member Jonathan Weissman and collaborators enables researchers to predict a cell’s path over time, such as what type of cell it will become, in normal settings or under genetic perturbations.