As the global health emergency caused by the Zika outbreak continues, the virus underlying it remains a mystery, with devastating consequences still being identified. More than a year after Zika became widespread in the Americas, scientists have yet to fully unravel its trajectory across the continents, the scale and impact…

Freeze-dried cellular components can be rehydrated to churn out useful proteins. Researchers at MIT and other institutions have created tiny freeze-dried pellets that include all of the molecular machinery needed to translate DNA into proteins, which could form the basis for on-demand production of drugs and vaccines. The pellets, which…

Gene-regulating RNA molecules could help treat early-stage breast cancer tumors before they spread. The spread of malignant cells around the body, known as metastasis, is the leading cause of mortality in women with breast cancer. Now, a new gene therapy technique being developed by researchers at MIT is showing promise…

Method that transports microbes through the stomach to the intestine may benefit human health. The human digestive tract contains trillions of bacteria, many of which help digest food and fight off harmful bacteria. Recent studies have shown that some of these bacteria may influence, for better or worse, human diseases…

Engineers program human cells to store complex histories in their DNA. MIT biological engineers have devised a way to record complex histories in the DNA of human cells, allowing them to retrieve “memories” of past events, such as inflammation, by sequencing the DNA. This analog memory storage system — the…