News

Mentorship goes a long way.

A big shout-out for the MIT Summer Research Program (MSRP), which has had a longstanding impact on many students who came through the program over the years (see MIT News). We are honored to have participated in the program as a host lab in the past years. Great to have hosted Jeandele Elliot this summer, who is a chemical engineering student from Howard University. We look forward to seeing her doing fantastic things in the years to come!

Weng Lab receives a grant from the Keck Foundation for enzyme evolution research.

Associate Professor Jing-Ke Weng of the Whitehead Institute and MIT is the recipient of a $1 million grant from the W. M. Keck Foundation to develop new biotechnologies that enable directed evolution of metabolic enzymes at will. If successful, this project will have a transformative impact upon multiple fields by enabling the unprecedented capability to create new designer medicines and commodity chemicals.

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.