Standing by its commitment to provide equitable and open access to scholarship, MIT has ended negotiations with Elsevier for a new journals contract. Elsevier was not able to present a proposal that aligned with the principles of the MIT Framework for Publisher Contracts. Developed by the MIT Libraries in collaboration with the Ad Hoc Task Force on Open Access to MIT’s Research and…
It was during a cruise in Alaska that Linda Zhong realized that the world didn’t have to be full of plastic. “I grew up in cities, so you’re very used to seeing all kinds of trash everywhere,” says the graduate student in microbiology. Zhong, who is Canadian and lived in Ottawa growing up and in Toronto during college, routinely saw…
Genomic imprinting and X-chromosome inactivation (XCI) are classic epigenetic phenomena that involve transcriptional silencing of one parental allele. Germline-derived differential DNA methylation is the best-studied epigenetic mark that initiates imprinting, but evidence indicates that other mechanisms exist. Recent studies have revealed that maternal trimethylation of H3 on lysine 27 (H3K27me3) mediates autosomal maternal allele-specific gene silencing and has an important role…
The dream of suspended animation has long captivated the human imagination, reflected in countless works of mythology and fiction, from King Arthur and Sleeping Beauty to Captain America and Han Solo. By effectively pausing time itself for an individual, a state of stasis promises to enable the repair of lethal injuries, prolong life and allow for travel to distant stars.…
A drug already in use for several cancers was found effective in a study of leptomeningeal dissemination of cancer (LMD). LMD affects the lining of the brain and spinal cord, called the meninges. About 5-10% of patients with solid tumors eventually develop cancers in these parts of the central nervous system. Breast cancer is the most common malignancy to metastasize…
By developing a lab-engineered model of the human blood-brain barrier (BBB), neuroscientists at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have discovered how the most common Alzheimer’s disease risk gene causes amyloid protein plaques to disrupt the brain’s vasculature and showed they could prevent the damage with medications already approved for human use. About 25 percent of people have the…
Throughout the past decade, consumer biology tests have been all the rage. Companies such as 23andMe and Ancestry DNA have made their test kits accessible to every day Americans. One can screen for anomalies in their genetic code or identify their lineage. With recent advances in stem cell research, a new opportunity within the consumer biology market has appeared. Nabeel…
Inside the biosafety level 4 lab at the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) in Boston, researchers wear three sets of gloves and breathe air piped into moon suits through snaking tubes. Before them, under a plastic shield, are human lung-sac cells grown from organoids, blobs of cells that mimic organs. Now it’s time to infect them with the coronavirus.…
Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers have developed an engineering technique to precisely control the direction that neurons grow their axons, cable-like structures that allow nerve cells to connect with each other. In a zebrafish model, researchers used the approach to correct defective neural connections and restore the neuron’s ability to cause muscle contractions. The findings, published in the journal Developmental Cell,…
Kristina Lopez, a first-year graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology working in Whitehead Fellow Kristin Knouse’s lab, has received the Ford Foundation Fellowship, an award designated by the National Academy of Sciences and funded by the Ford Foundation to encourage diversity in education. Lopez, a native of the mid-size South Texas city of McAllen is the first person in…
