Also in this issue:
Features
UROP-ean adventures
How a popular undergraduate research
program is building better scientists
Forty years after its inception, MIT's Undergraduate Research Opportunities
Program (UROP) continues to deliver benefits to students and their mentors
in laboratories across the campus. At Whitehead Institute, 30 participants in
the storied program are gaining invaluable hands-on experience, contributing meaningfully to groundbreaking biomedical research, and providing their
advisors a chance to sharpen their teaching skills
New growth opportunities
A collaboration in bioengineering brings stem cell cultivation to the (synthetic) surface
In a triumph of chemical engineering, biology, and materials science, Whitehead and MIT researchers have created a synthetic surface capable of fostering colonized growth of millions of human embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells
Research news
Reprogrammed human blood cells show promise for disease research
For the first time, cells from blood samples drawn in the clinic have been used to create induced pluripotent stem cells
"Relaxation" a critical step in vertebrate brain development
Whitehead scientists reveal that a precisely timed reduction in rigidity of a key cellular sheet is essential for proper structural formation of the vertebrate brain
A different tune: Cellular IPOD plays role in prion biology
Researchers discover a cellular compartment where prions may be
sequestered until they reach a more mature, transmissible state
New model tracks the immune response to a "T"
Genetically modified mice allow for unprecedented study of the
immune system's reaction to specific pathogens
Surprise in genome structure linked to developmental diseases
A newly discovered mechanism plays a pivotal role in gene transcription,
cell-state maintenance, and, when errant, cellular dysfunction
RNA snippets control protein production by disabling mRNAs
A comprehensive study of the actions of microRNAs lends new insight
into their regulatory effects
Departments
Community
Whitehead welcomes two new Members and a Fellow and bids a fond farewell to three other Fellows
Window on Whitehead: The flattery of imitation
NIH Director Francis Collins favors more research opportunities modeled on Whitehead's Fellow program
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