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For the first time, MIT researchers have performed a large-scale, high-resolution study of the cells in breast milk, allowing them to track how these

MIT researchers performed a large-scale, high resolution study of the cells in human breast milk, allowing them to track how these cells change over time in nursing mothers.

First synthetic circuit consists of entirely fast, reversible protein-protein interactions Synthetic biology offers a way to engineer cells to perform novel functions, such as glowing with fluorescent light when they detect a certain chemical. Usually, this is done by altering cells so they express genes that can be triggered by a certain input. However, there is often a long lag time between an event such as detecting a molecule and the resulting output, because of the time required for cells ...

Share Synthetic biology offers a way to engineer cells to perform novel functions, such as glowing with fluorescent light when they detect a certain chemical. Usually, this is done by altering cells so they express genes that can be triggered by a certain input.   However, there is often a long lag time between an event such as detecting a molecule and the resulting output, because of the time required for cells to transcribe and translate the necessary genes. MIT synthetic biologists have now...

Previous image Next image The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced Feb. 16 that it has awarded Sloan Research Fellowships to eight MIT professors in the MIT Media Lab and in the departments of Biology, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Chemical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Mathematics. The fellowships, which honor pre-tenure faculty members, will support their research with two-year, $75,000 awards. “The Sloan Research Fellowship Program recognizes and rewards out...

Credits: Credit: Courtesy of Ellen Zhong *Terms of Use: Images for download on the MIT News office website are made available to non-commercial entities, press and the general public under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives license. You may not alter the images provided, other than to crop them to size. A credit line must be used when reproducing images; if one is not provided below, credit the images to "MIT." ...

One reason it’s so difficult to produce effective vaccines against some viruses, including influenza and HIV, is that these viruses mutate very rapidly.

By bridging the conceptual divide between human language and viral evolution, MIT researchers have developed a powerful new computational tool for predicting the mutations that allow viruses to “escape” human immunity or vaccines. Its use could negate the need for high-throughput experimental techniques that are currently employed to identify potential mutations that could allow a virus to escape recognition. The computational model, based on models that were originally developed to analyze...

Credits: Image: CDC, Douglas Jordan, Christine Daniloff, MIT Previous image Next image One reason it’s so difficult to produce effective vaccines against some viruses, including influenza and HIV, is that these viruses mutate very rapidly. This allows them to evade the antibodies generated by a particular vaccine, through a process known as “viral escape.” MIT researchers have now devised a new way to computationally model viral escape, based on models th...