Identifying species among plants and animals has been a full-time occupation for some biologists, but the task is even more daunting for the myriad microbes that inhabit the planet. Now, MIT researchers have developed a simple measurement of gene flow that can define ecologically important populations among bacteria and archaea, including pinpointing populations associated with […]
A research team led by Whitehead Institute scientists has identified 30 distinct chemical compounds — 20 of which are drugs undergoing clinical trial or have already been approved by the FDA — that boost the protein production activity of a critical gene in the brain and improve symptoms of Rett syndrome, a rare neurodevelopmental condition […]
Throughout the animal kingdom, males and females frequently exhibit sexual dimorphism: differences in characteristic traits that often make it easy to tell them apart. In mammals, one of the most common sex-biased traits is size, with males typically being larger than females. This is true in humans: Men are, on average, taller than women. However, […]
The following press release was issued yesterday by the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. A team led by researchers from Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, has characterized and engineered a new gene-editing system that can precisely and efficiently insert large DNA sequences into a […]