Genetics

Writing for Forbes, Arvid Ernst Gollwitzer, a research scholar at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, spotlights FINGERS-7B, an AI foundation model for Alzheimer’s prevention his research team developed at MIT. “By analyzing signals spanning everything from genetic risk factors to long-term environmental exposures, the model detects patterns that no single-domain approach could find,” writes Gollwitzer. “These patterns, which we call multi-omic precision signatures, represent a new kind of biomarker for gauging early disease risk.” 

Sonia Vallabh, Director of Prion Therapeutic Science at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, speaks to Nature’s Josie Glausiusz about her journey co-leading an initiative to develop preventive drugs for prion disease, a rare, lethal neurodegenerative disease that is caused by misfolded proteins that kill neurons. “In pre-symptomatic people at risk, if we can lower the amount of normal protein, I’m hoping we can delay or even prevent the formation of the first misfolded prion,” says Vallabh.  

Research Affiliates Mathilde Poyet and Mathieu Groussin are featured by The New York Times Magazine reporter Jeneen Interlandi for their comprehensive fieldwork collecting diverse, microbial samples from communities across the globe to understand how differences in diet, lifestyle and industrialization affect microbiome health. “Microbes don’t like antibiotics, for obvious reasons,” Groussin says. “They don’t like C-sections, which rob them of the opportunity to colonize new human territory. And they hate ultra processed diets. All three of those are more prevalent in an industrialized world.” 

New York Times reporters Gina Kolata and Rebecca Robbins highlight how university researchers at MIT and Harvard laid the groundwork for the development of a new treatment for pancreatic cancer that “could wind up being the most significant advance in cancer treatment in 15 years, since the arrival of immunotherapy.” They write: “In 1982, Robert Weinberg, a scientist at MIT, made one of the seminal discoveries about how RAS genes fuel some cancers.” 

Nature reporter James Mitchell Crow spotlights Prof. Leonard Guarente’s work studying the impact of calorie restriction in life expectancy. Guarente’s research points to “the importance of a set of genes and associated proteins called sirtuins.” Guarente says: “If you make them more active, you extend the lifespan.”  

David Baltimore, a former Institute Professor at MIT and a Nobel laureate, has passed at the age of 87, reports Gina Kolata for The New York Times. Baltimore’s work rocked “the foundation of the fledging field of molecular biology,” writes Kolata. His “Nobel-winning discovery [upended] what was called the central dogma, which stated that information in cells flowed in only one direction — from DNA to RNA to the synthesis of proteins. Dr. Baltimore showed that information can also flow in the reverse direction, from RNA to DNA.” 

Wall Street Journal reporter Dominique Mosbergen spotlights how Prof. James Collins and his lab have built their “own algorithms to trawl chemical databases, such as those of existing pharmaceutical drugs, for potential antibacterial compounds.” Collins’ His lab is “also experimenting with using generative AI to design completely new molecules that could kill bacteria,” writes Mosbergen. 

Prof. William Thilly, a “leader of groundbreaking research into human genetic mutations, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor, and the inventor of Kellogg’s Apple Jacks cereal,” has died at age 79, reports Jade Lozada for The Boston Globe. “I will always remember Bill as my first mentor and a scientific father figure,” says alumnus Tushar Kamath. “I can’t imagine having pursued a career of medical research without the formative experiences he offered me.” 

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Victor Ambros '75, PhD '79 and Gary Ruvkun for the discovery of microRNA, “a tiny class of RNA molecules that play a crucial role in determining how organisms mature and function – and how they sometimes malfunction,” reports Teddy Rosenbluth and Derrick Bryson Taylor for The New York Times. Ambros and Ruvkun “had been postdoctoral fellows at the same time at Massachusetts Institute of Technology,” they explain . “As they studied C. elegans, they at first felt a smidgen of friendly competition as they each started their own labs in the Boston area, Dr. Ambros said.”

Victor Ambros '75, PhD '79 and Gary Ruvkun have won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of microRNAs, report Mark Johnson and Lizette Ortega for The Washington Post. “Ambros and Ruvkunhad worked together as postdoctoral researchers in the lab of Nobel laureate and MIT Professor Robert Horvitz. “What the microRNAs really end up revealing for us is a way that parts of our genome can communicate with other parts of the genome,” says Ambros. “The significance of this discovery of microRNAs is that it allowed us to be aware of a very complex and nuanced layer of regulation whereby genes in our cells talk to each other.”

Victor Ambros ‘75, PhD ‘79 and Gary Ruvkun have won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for “their groundbreaking work on how genes behave,” reports Patrick Smith for NBC News. Ambros and Ruvkun, who worked as postdocs in the lab of Professor H. Robert Horvitz in the late 1980s, discovered how microRNA molecules play a key role in gene regulation. "The pair sought to explore how nerve cells and muscle cells, for example, have very different characteristics despite having the same genetic information," writes Smith.

The Boston Globe’s Angelina Parrillo interviews Jasmina Aganovic ’09 about her beauty company Arcaea, which reconstructs data from extinct flowers to produce fragrances. “I viewed fragrance as this remarkable emotional storytelling category and people don’t view science as being associated with creativity, emotion, or storytelling,” Aganovic says. “I think that that’s very far from the truth.”

Prof. Li-Huei Tsai, director of the Picower Institute, speaks with NPR host Jon Hamilton about her work identifying a protein called reelin that appears to protect brain cells from Alzheimer's. “Tsai says she and her team are now using artificial intelligence to help find a drug that can replicate what reelin does naturally,” says Hamilton. 

Prof. Emerita Mary-Lou Pardue, a cellular and molecular biologist whose work “formed the foundation for key advancements and discoveries in understanding the structure of chromosomes,” has died at age 90, reports Bryan Marquard for The Boston Globe. Pardue “was a role model of what women in science can be at a time when there weren’t a lot of those, and a trailblazer as a woman,” emphasizes Ky Lowenhaupt, manager of the Biophysical Instrumentation Facility at MIT, “but also a trailblazer as a scientist who didn’t do things along the path that other people took.”

Sonia Vallabh and Eric Minikel, senior group leaders from the Broad Institute have created a gene-editing tool to combat prion diseases, reports Karen Weintraub for USA Today. The approach “should also work against diseases such as Huntington's, Parkinson's, ALS and even Alzheimer's, which result from the accumulation of toxic proteins,” Weintraub writes.