Howard Hughes Medical Institute

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Howard Hughes Medical Institute

HHMI invests in scientists at all career stages who make discoveries that advance human health for decades to come.

For more information about HHMI, visit http://www.hhmi.org/about/

04/01/2026

Mapping how neurons connect across the brain is one of neuroscience’s biggest challenges. At our Janelia Research Campus, the MouseLight project is rapidly building a dataset of fully traced neurons in the mouse brain — available to researchers everywhere, and helping to drive new insights into how brain circuits work and what goes wrong in disease.

[Video description: Fully traced neurons are visualized across the mouse brain, with colorful axons and dendrites revealing how long-range connections weave together to form brain circuits.]

03/29/2026

A long-standing mystery, resolved — and it could help fight drought & food scarcity. HHMI Investigator Zachary Lippman (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) and colleagues have uncovered ancient plant DNA (some more than 400 million years old) and ID’d 2.3 million regulatory DNA “switches” across 284 species. The discovery reveals a hidden system controlling how genes turn on and off across deep time, and offers a stunning "new lens on the evolution of life across eons.” bit.ly/47QjgZq

03/19/2026

Get lost in the unexpected beauty of a developing zebrafish eye. These incredible 3D images are possible thanks to Eric Betzig —Investigator & Senior Fellow at our Janelia Research Campus — who developed a microscopy technique combining two imaging approaches, including one used by astronomers to provide clear views of distant celestial objects.

03/17/2026

"Patience, curiosity, strategy, & help from a very cute friend." By investigating a heart rhythm disorder in mouse lemurs — Earth’s tiniest primate — HHMI Investigator Mark Krasnow (Stanford Medicine) uncovered the unexpected role magnesium plays in human heart health & disease: hhmi.news/3P9d9sP.

03/16/2026

New work from Investigator Huda Zoghbi & colleagues points to a promising new treatment strategy for Rett syndrome, a rare disorder that affects brain development in infants & children, primarily girls. Working in models, Zoghbi and collaborators have discovered how to increase levels of a brain protein disrupted by this genetic condition, and shown that doing so can improve function: bit.ly/3Np4Ng9.

03/15/2026

Beautiful, & built for discovery. These next-gen fluorescent dyes (developed by the Lavis Lab at our Janelia Research Campus) are brighter, more photostable, & more versatile than traditional dyes, helping researchers see life inside cells in unprecedented detail.

03/13/2026

Millions of people in the US alone live with chronic pain & little relief — but Hanna Gray Fellow Shan Meltzer wants to change that. Her team's new, cell-by-cell map of the spinal cord gives scientists a clearer picture of how pain-signals move through the body, a powerful resource that will be made openly available to help accelerate the discovery of new pain treatments: hhmi.news/4u1eIsJ.

03/11/2026

Second- or third-year PhD student in biological or biomedical sciences? Get ready — applications for our Gilliam Fellows Program open Sept. 1! Robust research support, incredible scientific community, & tailored professional development that can transform a PhD journey. bit.ly/4bjdTmr

03/07/2026

A new electronic implant system created by Freeman Hrabowski Scholar Juan Alvarez & colleagues helps lab-grown pancreatic cells mature & function properly. "Just like pacemakers help the heart keep rhythm, controlled electrical pulses can help pancreatic cells develop and function the way they’re supposed to,” says Alvarez. This provides a potential new pathway to replace damaged pancreatic tissue in patients with diabetes: bit.ly/4b16OHn.

03/05/2026

No rabbits, no top hats — just Gilliam Fellow Axel Vera leveling up on the standard poster session with a little sleight of hand. We guarantee you've never heard an anti-CRISPR (used to help control & improve precision gene editing) explainer like this before, & it's ... magic 🪄.

03/04/2026

These colorful muscle fibers tell a beautiful story of repair, & point to a potential approach to treating Duchenne muscular dystrophy — a rare, debilitating, & fatal disease. In DMD, a protein that helps muscle cells stay strong is missing. Here, UCLA researchers Courtney Young, Melissa Spencer & April Pyle have used a CRISPR-Cas9-based therapy to repair a patient's DMD gene & restore the missing protein (green).

03/02/2026

Behold the (charming) face of a fruit fly that helped HHMI Investigator Amita Sehgal and team uncover how sleep acts as a critical "cellular housekeeper," keeping our neurons healthy, and so much more. Their findings could drive a better understanding of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, which are commonly associated with disordered sleep. “We are super excited about our research right now,” Sehgal says. “We feel like we’re sort of really starting to crack the whole sleep thing.” bit.ly/3ZKNFnK

Image: Blood cells circulating in the head of a fruit fly. Courtesy of Bumsik Cho.

Address

4000 Jones Bridge Road
Chevy Chase, MD
20815

Telephone

+13012158500

Website

http://www.hhmi.org/, https://www.hhmi.org/careers, https://www.janelia.org/, https://www.instagram.com/hhmi_science, ht

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