News

The challenges presented by climate change are wide-ranging — and so must be science’s response. In this Director’s Dialogue, which took place on May 4, 2021, three Whitehead Institute scientists, Jing-Ke Weng, Mary Gehring and Jonathan Weissman, speak with Institute Director Ruth Lehmann about exciting opportunities for leveraging fundamental biological research to create biotechnologies that address some of climate change’s vexing effects.

They discuss plant biology research aiming to combat food insecurity by creating heartier and more diverse feed crops, new research approaches that enable scientists to sustainably synthesize therapeutic compounds from plants, and to pinpoint (and replicate) the genetic drivers of certain plants’ ability to thrive in difficult climates, and an exciting new strategy for carbon-sequestration.

A news piece introducing Weng lab research on medicinal plants of the world by Greta Friar.

Rainforest by Ben Britten is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Making our world more sustainable to preserve it for future generations will take not just one but many solutions. Researchers at Whitehead Institute are exploring how the natural world could teach us how to improve the sustainability of how we produce food, how we make medicines, how we make products more durable, and potentially how we remove carbon from the atmosphere.  In this special episode of AudioHelicase, we’ll hear from researchers at the Institute that are pursuing creative solutions to sustainability that combine a passion for making a difference with boundless curiosity for the living world.

Whitehead Institute Members Ankur Jain and Jing-Ke Weng have received a @cziscience grant for a collaborative project using plant cells to screen for small molecules that affect RNA & protein aggregates seen in neurodegeneration: http://ow.ly/bRY550B3KsY

Joe Jacobowitz successfully defended his PhD thesis today through Zoom (the first time ever in the Weng lab history). Many congrats to achieving this remarkable milestone in your career at this challenging time! We will make up for the in-person celebrations at an appropriate time, hopefully in the near future.

Celebration poster by Sophia Xu

Plants have been used as medicine for thousands of years; could they contribute to a solution to the COVID-19 pandemic? This is what Whitehead Institute Member Jing-Ke-Weng set out to address in a new paper, published May 20 in the journal Molecular Plant. In the recent episode of AudioHelicase, he spoke about an herbal treatment being used to treat COVID-19 in China derived from Traditional Chinese Medicine, the work necessary for such a treatment to be translated to an FDA-approved drug, and why the COVID-19 pandemic underscores the need for basic, fundamental research in plant science and beyond.

Fu-shuang Li is collecting plant specimens for his research on pollen, and using the extra specimens to create pollen and flower art. Click here to learn more and see some of his creations.

Mike’s paper on the structures and evolution of the plant AAAD protein family is out today. Congrats!. Please check out the Whitehead news release here.

Our collaborative paper with Marelli lab on using silk‐based microinjector for site-specific target delivery in plants is out today. Congrats to all! See news release from Phys.Org here.

Colin’s paper on discovering the first plant halogenase from moonseed plant is out today. Congrats! See news release from Phys.Org here.