Atlas of the brain’s striatum could guide researchers to new drug treatments
A new study reveals insights into populations of neurons affected by Huntington’s disease, schizophrenia, addiction, and other disorders.
MIT Quantum Initiative launches postdoctoral fellowship program
The Institute welcomes its first cohort of QMIT Fellows this fall to advance interdisciplinary quantum research.
Study: Peptides can form well-defined structures in harsh, Venus-like conditions
New research offers support for the possibility that complex biological molecules could exist in the highly acidic environment of Venus’s cloud layer.
Playing against climate risk
Climate scientist Sai Ravela is using games to help coastal communities find creative adaptations to climate change.
How an MIT graduate student helped a team of young scientists test their experiment at CERN
Physics PhD student Manu Srivastava helped high school students in India develop a test that could contribute to one of the world’s largest neutrino experiments.
Gage Coon: An Earth scientist exploring the power of microbes
The PhD student’s research on how microorganisms digest compounds in their environment could enable advances in wastewater treatment.
Looking beyond natural sequences
A new machine-learning framework aims to improve the success rate of computational protein design while moving away from results that reproduce sequences found in nature.
AI helps design new materials that work in the real world
The “CrysVCD” tool developed at MIT could cut the huge amounts of time and money spent on screening out chemically unstable designs.
Cells use a little-known molecule to protect themselves from iron overload
This discovery points toward new combination strategies against cancer, and may explain the iron buildup seen in disorders such as early-onset Parkinson’s disease.
Brain circuit keeps tabs on what just happened to aid judgment of what’s happening now
To keep track of what’s going on in front of it, the brain relies not only on what it sees, but also a comparison with what it just saw. A new study pinpoints the circuit that provides that service.
Meteorite dust holds records of magnetism that may have helped form the sun
The discovery likely represents the earliest known evidence of a magnetic field in the infant solar system.
Language skills stay strong in older adults, even while other cognitive abilities decline
MIT researchers find that activity in the brain’s language network is nearly identical in young and old people.
Paving the way for greener ammonia production
New MIT research could lead to better materials for a fossil-fuel-free process for making the chemical that's essential to fertilizer and other products.
How the Toxoplasma parasite adapts to crowded conditions in host cells
A new study by Whitehead Institute researchers identifies how the widespread parasite Toxoplasma gondii survives in crowded environments in infected cells, which helps it persist in long-lasting brain cysts.
Tackling rare genetic disorders with patient-focused science
Shannon Knight, a brain and cognitive sciences PhD candidate and McGovern Institute researcher, focuses on developing a novel gene therapy.