Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Mapping an entire (fly) brain: A step toward understanding diseases of the human brain
Oct. 2, 2024
Author
Written by Liz Fuller-Wright, Office of Communications

For many heartbreaking diseases of the brain — dementia, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and others — doctors can only treat the symptoms. Medical science does not have a cure.

Why? Because it’s difficult to cure what we don’t understand, and the human brain, with its billions of neurons connected by a hundred trillion synapses, is almost…

Mapping an entire (fly) brain: A step toward understanding diseases of the human brain
Oct. 2, 2024
Author
Written by Liz Fuller-Wright, Office of Communications

For many heartbreaking diseases of the brain — dementia, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and others — doctors can only treat the symptoms. Medical science does not have a cure.

Why? Because it’s difficult to cure what we don’t understand, and the human brain, with its billions of neurons connected by a hundred trillion synapses, is almost…

Researchers bend DNA strands with light, revealing a new way to study the genome
Sept. 9, 2024
Author
Written by Wright Seneres, Princeton Entrepreneurship Council

With the flick of a light, researchers have found a way to rearrange life’s basic tapestry, bending DNA strands back on themselves to reveal the material nature of the genome.

Scientists have long debated about the physics of chromosomes — structures at the deepest interior of a cell that are made of long DNA strands tightly coiled around…

Ilana Witten named HHMI Investigator
July 23, 2024
Author
Written by Liz Fuller-Wright, Office of Communications

Neuroscientist Ilana Witten, who investigates the brain circuits behind learning and decision-making, has been named a 2024 Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator.

Witten, a professor of neuroscience at Princeton University, is one of 26 new investigators from…

Graduate student Priscilla Louis earns prestigious HHMI Gilliam Fellowship
July 17, 2024

PNI graduate student Priscilla Louis, and her advisors, PNI associate director and associate professor…