Whitehead Faculty
Ask a visiting scientist to describe the Whitehead Institute and two themes emerge immediately: the exceptional quality of the scientific staff and the collaborative spirit—the ethos that encourages researchers at every level to share new ideas and benefit from the insights and experience of their colleagues. The key to this combination of excellence and accessibility is, of course, the faculty.
Whitehead Institute’s world-renowned faculty
include the recipient of the 2011 National Medal of Science (Rudolf Jaenisch); 2010 National Medal of Science (Susan Lindquist); 1997 National Medal of
Science (Robert A Weinberg); eight Members of the National
Academy of Sciences (David Bartel, Gerald R. Fink, Jaenisch,
Lindquist, Harvey F. Lodish,
Terry Orr-Weaver, David C. Page, and Weinberg); five
members of the Institute of Medicine (Fink, Jaenisch, Lindquist, Page and Weinberg); and seven Fellows of
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Hidde Ploegh
and Fink, Jaenisch, Lindquist, Lodish, Page, and Weinberg).
All Whitehead faculty are also professors at MIT.
Members
David Bartel is a leader in the discovery and study of microRNAs, which play important gene regulatory roles in both plants and animals. He and his colleagues recently showed that well over one-third of human genes are regulated by microRNAs and found an example in which the disruption of one of these regulatory interactions helps cause human cancers.
Iain Cheeseman
studies the kinetochore, a structure of proteins
on chromosomes. The kinetochore acts as a hook to which long
cellular protein fibers attach during cell division. The
kinetochore ensures that chromosomes are positioned and split
correctly as the protein filaments pulls them apart. Cheeseman is
working to identify the unknown proteins in the kinetochore,
define the role of each kinetochore protein in the cell division
process, and describe how attachments to kinetochores are regulated throughout cell division.
Gerald R. Fink, a Founding Member, analyzes common baker’s yeast to explore critical pathways in cell growth and metabolism; applications include cancer research and the development of new anti-fungal drugs. He also directs a plant research group recently heralded for new insights into root growth and salt metabolism.
Mary Gehring uses the plant Arabidopsis thaliana to study epigenetics, heritable changes in phenotype not caused by changes in the DNA sequence. Her research focuses on the functional consequences of changes in DNA methylation and other aspects of the epigenome during plant development and reproduction. The Gehring lab is also exploring if epigenetic responses to environmental inputs can ultimately lead to evolutionary changes.
Piyush Gupta investigates the mechanisms that regulate the self-renewal and differentiation of stem and progenitor cells in adult tissues, and how perturbations in these mechanisms promote cancer progression and therapy resistance.
Rudolf Jaenisch is a Founding Member of Whitehead Institute and a pioneer of transgenic science, in which researchers alter an animal’s genetic makeup to produce a variant of a human disease. His lab focuses on understanding epigenetic regulation of gene expression (the biological mechanisms that affect how genetic information is converted into cell structures but that don’t alter the genes in the process). His work has led to major advances in our understanding of mammalian cloning and embryonic stem cells.
Susan L.
Lindquist conducts groundbreaking research on how
such diverse processes as stress tolerance, neurodegenerative
disease, and heredity can be governed by changes in
protein conformation. Her research on prion proteins
has provided the definitive evidence for a new form
of genetics, based upon the inheritance of proteins
with new, self-perpetuating shapes rather than new DNA
sequences.
Harvey F. Lodish, a Founding Member and leader in the field of membrane biology, has isolated and cloned numerous proteins that reside on the surface of cells and play a role in cell growth, glucose transport, and fatty acid transport. His results have important implications for the treatment of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and obesity.
Terry L. Orr-Weaver deciphers critical events in cell division. She has elucidated mechanisms governing the initiation of replication and chromosome segregation and uncovered a link between proteins needed for transcription and gene expression and the process of DNA replication.
David C. Page
studies the Y chromosome — the chromosome that
distinguishes males from females. In 1992, his laboratory
mapped and cloned the entire Y chromosome. Today, he
uses the map and other tools to trace the genetic causes
of male infertility, the history of the Y chromosome
and human populations, and the origins of common genetic
diseases.
Hidde Ploegh
investigates the molecular mechanisms by which the immune
system responds to antigens such as viruses or bacteria.
His work currently focuses on the flu and herpes viruses
and the processes by which they evade the immune system.
Peter W. Reddien
works to understand regeneration through research on
planarians, flatworms with regenerative powers that
have captured the imagination of biologists for over
a century.
David Sabatini
studies the basic mechanisms that regulate growth, the
process whereby cells accumulate mass to increase in
size. His work has focused in part on a cellullar system
called the TOR pathway, a critical regulator of growth
in many species. To decipher the molecular pathways
that regulate cell growth, Sabatini has developed new
technologies to study the functions of large sets of
genes in mammalian cells.
Hazel L. Sive focuses on development of the vertebrate embryo, using frogs and the zebrafish, as model systems. Her lab studies two major areas. The first is development of the extreme anterior (front) of the embryo, a unique region, which forms the primary mouth, the first opening between the embryo and the gut. The second focus is on development of the nervous system, including the genetic basis for formation of correct brain structure. Sive has a long-standing interest in using the zebrafish as a tool to understand human mental health disorders, including schizophrenia and autism.
Robert A. Weinberg, a Whitehead Founding Member and pioneer in cancer research, discovered the first human oncogene and isolated the first known tumor suppressor gene. Today, his lab’s research focuses on two areas: the interactions between epithelial and stromal cells that produce carcinomas and how cancer cells spread throughout the body.
Richard A. Young is a pioneer in gene transcription, the process by which cells read and interpret the genetic instructions embedded in DNA. The Young lab also uses DNA arrays and other state-of-the-art genomic tools to map the genome-wide circuitry of living cells and to study infectious diseases. Achievements include novel AIDS vaccine candidates and new approaches to drug-resistant tuberculosis.
Affiliate Member
David
Gifford directs the Programming Systems Research
Group at MIT, where he is a Professor of Computer Science
and Engineering. His research focuses on developing
novel computational methods for the analysis of data
from high throughput molecular biology experiments.
He has developed such things as agent-based digital
broadcast systems, effect systems for programming languages,
and algebraic video systems.
[former
whitehead scientists]
Last updated September 28, 2011.
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