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C. David Allis, Joy and Jack Fishman Professor and head of the Laboratory of Chromatin Biology and Epigenetics, has won the 2016 Gruber Genetics Prize. He shares the $500,000 award with Michael Grunstein of the University of California, Los Angeles. The award, given by The Gruber Foundation, reco...

Accompanying commentary recommends revisiting current bioethical guidelines in light of advance       Despite significant biomedical advances in recent decades, the very earliest events of human development­—those that occur during a critical window just after fertilization—h...

Charles M. Rice, Maurice R. and Corinne P. Greenberg Professor in Virology and head of the Laboratory of Virology and Infectious Disease, has been honored with the 2016 InBev-Baillet Latour Health Prize for his work on the hepatitis C virus. Queen Mathilde of Belgium presented Rice with the prize...

Aging takes its toll on the brain, and the cells of the hippocampus—a brain region with circuitry crucial to learning and memory—are particularly vulnerable to changes that can lead to Alzheimer’s disease or cognitive decline. With the hope of counteracting the changes that can lead to these t...

Same but Different: How epigenetics can blur the line between nature and nurture "Allis walked me to his lab, a fluorescent-lit space overlooking the East River, divided by wide, polished-stone benches. A mechanical stirrer, whirring in a corner, clinked on the edge of a glass beaker. 'Two featur...

Like jewels in a vault, our precious genetic material is stored in the nucleus of a cell—sequestered away from potentially damaging cellular components and toxins so that no harm can come to it. Yet over the course of a life moving through this world, our DNA does get damaged, and our cells have ...

More than half of our brains are made up of glial cells, which wrap around nerve fibers and insulate them—similarly to how the plastic casing of an electric cable insulates the copper wire within—allowing electrical and chemical impulses to travel faster. In the past, neuroscientists considered ...

Some cells are meant to live, and some are meant to die. The linker cell of Caenorhabditis elegans, a tiny worm that is a favored model organism for biologists, is among those destined for termination. This cell helps determine the shape of the gonad in male worms—and then it dies, after two days...

by Katherine Fenz, media relations manager Mutant mosquitoes Earlier this month, PBS Newshour featured Leslie Vosshall in a segment on the use of mutant mosquitoes to fight Zika and dengue fever. “Mosquitoes—especially the mosquitoes that are spreading Zika, dengue, and chikungunya...

In the ongoing arms race between pathogenic viruses and the cells they infect, each side needs every advantage it can get. One way wily viruses can get a leg up is by subverting the microRNAs (miRNAs) of their host. These miRNAs are small stretches of RNA made by host cells to regulate gene expre...