News

Unusual labmates: Lighting up the lab

Unusual Labmates is a multimedia series exploring some of the uncommon species used for research at Whitehead Institute. The recent entry features fireflies, including the American species Photinus pyralis and the Japanese species Aquatica lateralis, which the Weng lab is using to better understand the ability to emit light. Click here to experience a multimedia story about fireflies, including how we rear them in the lab and what we hope to learn from investigating their biology.

Scaffolding the nursery of pollen development.

Joe Jacobowitz’s paper on the function of two genetically redundant peroxidases in Arabidopsis pollen development is published this week in the journal Plant Cell. Congrats! Check out the Whitehead Institute news release here.

Electromicroscopy image of an Arabidopsis anther (yellow) filled with pollen grains (purple). Credit: Joseph Jacobowitz and Nicki Watson/Whitehead Institute

Sporopollenin structure unraveled!

The Weng lab resolved the molecular structure of pine sporopollenin. A paper describing this work is published today at Nature Plants. The news release from the Whitehead institute can be accessed here. Special thanks to the Hong lab of MIT Chemistry, our fantastic collaborator on this project!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Electron micrograph of mixed plant pollen grains. Credit: Louisa Howard.