Howard Hughes Medical Institute

05/31/2026

HHMI Investigator Kafui Dzirasa & team at Duke University have built a biological "wire" called LinCx that connects carefully chosen neurons — bypassing broken brain circuits rather than repairing them — and, unlike existing tools, offers cellular-level precision. Next, the team will test whether the technology is powerful enough to override failures in brain cell communication caused by lifelong genetic disruptions: bit.ly/4wDcmln.

05/29/2026

Clusters of comets coming for you? ☄️ Not quite. This timelapse captures something far smaller: an animal's kidney cells dividing, imaged with confocal microscopy. The glowing orange traces each cell's internal transportation network — watch how it reorganizes & splits as cells divide. 📸: Andy Moore, HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus

05/28/2026

Beyond thrilled to welcome our inaugural cohort of Cech Fellows — 176 talented undergrads who will spend 9 weeks this summer alongside leading HHMI scientists across the country & at our Janelia Research Campus! This immersive program gives students the chance to contribute to real scientific discovery, gain professional mentorship, & explore potential careers in biological & biomedical research: hhmi.news/4dBq7tb.

The immersive summer research program pairs talented undergraduates from 109 institutions across 36 states and territories with leading HHMI scientists.

05/27/2026

By "eavesdropping" on the dreaming brain, HHMI Investigator Massimo Scanziani's lab at UCSF discovered something remarkable: During REM sleep (when the animal is immobile), the brain’s motor center still sends commands to turn the head left or right, causing the brain’s internal compass to respond as if the head had turned. This & other insights from Scanziani's research could help scientists understand how the brain generates information without any external input — a fundamental aspect of our brains essential for predicting, interpreting, and acting in the world efficiently: bit.ly/3RwRXhI.

By examining what happens in the brain during REM sleep, HHMI Investigator Massimo Scanziani and his team are uncovering how the brain dreams up scenarios without any input from the outside world. This story is part of a series exploring sleep research at HHMI.

05/26/2026

You asked, we answered — this time for our united Freeman Hrabowski Scholars & Hanna Gray Fellows programs. A warm welcome into who's eligible, how the programs connect, & more, from our very own Science Program team members Mary Bonds & Lucy Corcoran. Applications open 11/3! bit.ly/fhs26

05/24/2026

Dravet syndrome is a rare, often fatal form of childhood epilepsy. New research from HHMI Investigator David Liu & collaborators found that a single dose of base editing can correct its underlying mutation in mice, dramatically reducing seizures & extending survival. “This study gives us hope that base editing could be an effective approach for durably correcting the underlying cause of Dravet syndrome in patients,” Liu says. bit.ly/4nLvIAM

Harvard University, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

📸: Mouse neurons courtesy of Christophe Leterrier, NeuroCyto Lab, INP, Marseille, France, via NIH BRAIN Initiative.

05/22/2026

"How can I help keep all people healthy, all around the world?" The question that sparked UC Berkeley Hanna Gray Fellow Tulika Singh's research now fuels her quest to learn which antibodies destroy viruses best, & how the body saves them as "memories" that can reactivate against the next infection. Learn more about our Hanna Gray Fellows Program: https://bit.ly/HGF26.

05/22/2026

These dazzling neurons belong to a fruit fly. Confocal microscopy images of them were taken & combined by researchers at our Janelia Research Campus like pieces of a puzzle to build a rough map of the ventral nerve cord (VNC) — the insect equivalent of a spinal cord that coordinates walking, flying, & reflex.

05/21/2026

This could change everything (about how scientists study learning): New research from Sr. Group Leader Josh Dudman's lab at our Janelia Research Campus has found bigger rewards actually *speed up* learning thanks to sustained dopamine surges: hhmi.news/43noNnK.

05/17/2026

Meet the 96-channel electronic pipette that helped HHMI Investigator Paul Bieniasz & colleagues at The Rockefeller University run 7,000+ parallel experiments that uncovered more than 100 bNAb escape mutations across 15 viral strains. What’s it all mean? Broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) are a promising HIV treatment, but the virus is highly skilled at escaping them. Bieniasz & team used a new method to build the most comprehensive view yet of how HIV-1 builds resistance. “Knowing how different strains of the virus respond to leading bNAb therapies will greatly improve our ability to anticipate whether a particular therapy will be effective for individual patients,” says Bieniasz. bit.ly/3RCCi08

📷: Lori Chertoff

Study shows the most comprehensive view to date of how some viral strains develop drug resistance.