Featured series 
Tag: Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology
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Health
Diverse ‘connectomes’ hint at genes’ limits in the nervous system
Genetics may play a surprisingly small role in determining the precise wiring of the mammalian nervous system, according to painstaking mapping of every neuron projecting to a small muscle mice use to move their ears.
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Health
Another step forward in ALS and stem cell research
A Harvard Stem Cell Institute research team has succeeded in deriving spinal motor neurons from human embryonic stem cells, and has then used them to replicate the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) disease process in a laboratory dish.
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Health
Another step forward in cell reprogramming
Imagine, if you can, a day within the next decade when a physician-scientist could remove a skin cell from your arm, and with a few chemicals turn that fully formed adult cell into a dish of stem cells genetically matched to you.
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Health
Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers turn one form of adult mouse cell directly into another
In a feat of biological prestidigitation likely to turn the field of regenerative medicine on its head, Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) co-director Doug Melton and post doctoral fellow Qiao…
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Health
Newly discovered class of mouse retinal cells detect upward motion
Harvard researchers have discovered a previously unknown type of retinal cell that plays an exclusive and unusual role in mice: detecting upward motion. The cells reflect their function in the…
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Science & Tech
President Faust testifies for increase in NIH funding
With the careers of a generation of young researchers threatened by five years of flat National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding, Harvard President Drew Faust and leaders of six other…
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Health
Researchers create colorful “Brainbow” images of the nervous system
By activating multiple fluorescent proteins in neurons, neuroscientists at Harvard University are imaging the brain and nervous system as never before, rendering their cells in a riotous spray of colors dubbed a “Brainbow.”
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Science & Tech
Basic understanding of biological clock advances
Writing this week in the journal Science, researchers at Harvard describe what causes a trio of proteins, if placed in a test tube with the common biochemical fuel ATP as…
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Health
Nine Harvard faculty members win NIH’s Pioneer, Innovator Awards
Nine Harvard researchers “well-positioned to make significant – and potentially transformative – discoveries in a variety of areas,” ranging from brain development to reprogramming stem cells, have been awarded special…
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Health
RNA sequence restrains fatal encephalitis
One short sequence of RNA protected mice from deadly brain inflammation caused by West Nile virus and Japanese encephalitis virus, report Priti Kumar, Manjunath Swamy, and Premlata Shankar. The findings,…
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Health
Protein underlies brain’s response to activity
Experience helps shape the brain, but how that happens – how synapses are remodeled in response to activity – is one of neurobiology’s biggest mysteries. Though axons and dendrites can…
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Arts & Culture
Controlling long-term memory
Harvard University biologists have identified a molecular pathway active in neurons that interacts with RNA to regulate the formation of long-term memory in fruit flies. The same pathway is also found at mammalian synapses, and could eventually present a target for new therapeutics to treat human memory loss.
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Health
Long-term memory controlled by molecular pathway at synapses
Even for a fruit fly, learning and memory are important adaptive tools that facilitate survival in the environment. A fly can learn to avoid what may do it harm, such…
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Health
Synthetic molecule blocks exit from cell organelle
The ubiquitous, small GTPases are a family of signal transduction molecules that play crucial roles in numerous biological processes, including cell motility and division. Though scientists have eyed these proteins…
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Campus & Community
Sexual attraction a matter of scent
An unexpected finding may settle an ongoing scientific debate by providing evidence that key reproductive behaviors in mice arise predominantly, if not exclusively, from olfactory input instead of input from the vomeronasal, visual, or auditory senses.
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Campus & Community
Investigating phenomenon of sleep
Alexander Schier’s transparent fish are helping him understand the basic secrets of human development: how early embryonic cells communicate so that some develop into heart tissue, some into brain cells, and others into tissues that form the rest of the body.
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Campus & Community
Adult cells transformed into stem cells
Harvard researchers fused adult skin cells with embryonic stem cells in such a way that the genes of the embryonic cells reset the genetic clock of the adult cells, turning…
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Campus & Community
Stem cell research debate continues
Stem cell research is a complicated subject, not only scientifically but ethically as well. This past Friday (April 15) a debate at Harvard Law School promised to shed light on…
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Health
DNA splicing enzyme observed in action
Researchers in the lab of Tom Ellenberger, the Hsien Wu and Daisy Yen Wu professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard Medical School, reported the doughnut shape of…
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Health
Stem cell science
“Stem-cell transplants are already performed every day in Harvard-affiliated hospitals — and around the world,” says Harvard Stem Cell Initiative codirector David Scadden, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School…
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Campus & Community
3-D images reveal key step in viral entry into cells
Work published in the Jan. 22, 2004, issue of Nature is a significant advance in the understanding of how viruses cause infection, and offers two possible strategies for blocking these…
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Health
New multiple sclerosis drugs are found
Five years ago, scientists at Harvard University began to take a close look at Copolymer 1, a treatment for multiple sclerosis, that is put together from a string of amino…
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Health
Death protein may cause neural tube defects in babies of diabetic mothers
A research report provides a possible explanation for a class of birth defects that appears to be on the rise. A protein normally involved in programmed cell death may, as…
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Science & Tech
New way to ‘see’ DNA
Research by Harvard scientists was driven by the need to make extremely small holes that mimic the pores in human cells through which different molecules must pass to keep the…