MIT Department of Biology

03/14/2023

Support Biology with a gift today to help unlock $100,000 for the School of Science. If 175 donors give to the School of Science, Dyann Wirth PhD ’78 will make a $50,000 gift. If an additional 175 donors give, she will generously make another gift of $50,000, for a total of $100,000! Thank you for supporting our students and faculty as they work to build a better world.
MIT Alumni Association Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) https://giving.mit.edu/explore/schools/science/biology

06/08/2022

Jennifer Cloutier's ambition to understand how tissues regenerate after damage was ignited by a spinal-cord injury at age six.

HMS grad Jennifer Cloutier has a habit of pushing limits

06/06/2022

"Once I joined the MITxBio team, I came to understand visual representations of biological phenomena in a new way." Instructor of Blended and Online Initiatives Darcy Gordon spoke about teaching biology through multimedia.

Producing multimedia for online courses involves lifelong learning

06/03/2022

In a whirlwind team project, undergraduates Aniket Dehadrai SB ’22 and Brindha Rathinasabapthi SB ’24 of the Boyer lab pioneered a new method to study how hearts are built. Read more: bit.ly/3PE25j6

05/31/2022

Congratulations to our PhD graduates from September 2021, February 2022, and June 2022! We are so proud of you, and can't wait to see the places you'll go 🎓

05/27/2022

How does a flatworm transition from healing to regeneration? A team in the Reddien lab has discovered equinox, a gene that allows planarians to regrow body parts after healing wounds. Read more: bit.ly/3lCtXGM

05/25/2022

Congrats to the MIT School of Science's 2022 Searle Scholars, Lindsay Case and Guangyu Robert Yang! The award honors outstanding assistant professors who have high potential for ongoing innovative research contributions in medicine, chemistry, or the biological sciences.

MIT scientists Lindsay Case and Guangyu Robert Yang have been named 2022 Searle Scholarships.

05/23/2022

Researchers in the Jaenisch lab have developed an improved recipe for creating mature liver cells in the lab.

Researchers in Whitehead Institute Founding Member Rudolf Jaenisch’s lab tackled the problem of how to make mature liver from stem cells in the lab, and found that thyroid hormone signaling plays a key role.

05/20/2022

The Lourido lab developed a new method to probe gene function in the parasite Toxoplasma gondii and uncovered a previously unstudied kinase, SPARK, linked to the parasites' ability to enter and leave host cells. Read more: bit.ly/3LG9oEO

05/18/2022

Work from Graham Walker’s lab suggests that one historically under-appreciated cause of bacterial death, called oxidative stress, could help scientists develop antibiotics that kill bacteria more effectively. Read more:

Depletion of either the DapB or Dxr proteins causes oxidative stress and cell death in bacteria, which could aid the development of more effective antibiotics.

05/13/2022

The Australian stinging tree is covered in silicon needles laced with one of nature’s most excruciating toxins, a compound called moroidin. The Weng lab recently published the first method to biosynthesize moroidin within the tissues of harmless plants such as to***co, facilitating research on the compound’s utility for cancer treatments.

A pain-causing compound in the Australian stinging tree has applications for cancer treatment, but it’s difficult to harvest enough to study. Whitehead Institute scientists present a way to synthesize the compound in the leaves of harmless to***co plants, and potentially in a culture dish.