Inspiration from a porcupine’s quills
Understanding the mechanisms behind quill penetration and extraction could help engineers design better medical devices.
Department
Biology
Probing matters of the heart
New study of stem cell differentiation could help researchers better understand the genetic basis of heart disease.
Tracking stem cell reprogramming
Biologists reveal genes key to development of pluripotency, in single cells.
Four from MIT win NIH grants
Brown, Gore, Ploegh and Zhang receive grants for innovative biomedical research.
Fundamentals of Biology now available in OCW Scholar format
Course is the last of seven OCW has published this year specifically to meet the needs of independent learners.
Turning on key enzyme blocks tumor formation
Drug-like molecule restores normal cell metabolism, preventing cancer cells from growing.
Teaching a microbe to make fuel
Genetically modified organism could turn carbon dioxide or waste products into a gasoline-compatible transportation fuel.
Protein that boosts longevity may protect against diabetes
Sirtuins help fight off disorders linked to obesity, new MIT study shows.
Chris A. Kaiser selected as MIT provost
Longtime member of the biology faculty to succeed L. Rafael Reif as the Institute’s senior academic and budget officer.
Piece by piece
MIT biologist Schwartz relishes the challenge of picking apart the cell’s most complex structure.
Robots that reveal the inner workings of brain cells
New method offers automated way to record electrical activity inside neurons in the living brain.
Four MIT professors elected to National Academy of Sciences
Liskov, Suresh, Townsend and Young bring to 78 the number of Institute faculty who are NAS members.