Blog

In an essay in this month’s Nature Chemical Biology, the Broad’s Bridget Wagner describes her view of one of the greatest challenges in chemical biology today – identifying chemical compounds that coax cells to take on new properties. With these compounds in hand, you could transform cells from what they were to what you want them to be.

Since the human genome became public information a decade ago, researchers have been developing new ways to dissect, examine, and probe it to find clues to understand the genetic basis of human illness. This fall, a new endeavor known as the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) project, became one of the latest – and largest – efforts to link certain genetic variations with changes in the abundance of particular proteins in unique tissues of the body.

Gestalt principles of perception are theories proposed by German psychologists in the 1920s to explain how people organize visual information. In his monthly column in Nature Methods, the Broad's Creative Director, Bang Wong, explains how Gestalt psychology is often at the root of how visual images are seen and interpreted.

Reading about the discovery of the lost letters from DNA researcher Francis Crick to colleague Maurice Wilkins made me think about what kind of paper trail today’s leading scientists are leaving. (Wilkins shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Crick and James Watson for their work on the DNA model.)