2008-2010

The Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation announced that Gary Ruvkun has been awarded the 2008 Lasker Award for Medical Research for the discovery of "tiny RNAs that regulate gene function." Dr. Ruvkun (MGH/Harvard Medical School) shared the award with Victor...

Jack Szostak was awarded the Dr. H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences for "his highly original insights into the fundamental processes of life." Read the press release.

The 2009 American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Promega Biotechnology Research Award is being presented to George M. Church, Ph.D., professor of genetics, Harvard Medical School, and director of the Lipper Center for Computational Genetics in Boston...

For more than 3 decades, researchers have been engineering microbes with the aim of harnessing these simple creatures to clean up pollution, make drugs, and produce biofuels. They have largely been limited to tinkering with individual genes, however. Now...

Every living cell, even the simplest bacterium, teems with molecular contraptions that would be the envy of any nanotechnologist. As they incessantly shake or spin or crawl around the cell, these machines cut, paste and copy genetic molecules, shuttle...

J. Craig Venter, the visionary biologist and intellectual entrepreneur who was a leading figure in the decoding of the human genome, will join Harvard University as a visiting scholar at the University’s Origins of Life Initiative. Venter, who left his...

Harvard scientists have unveiled a new laser-measuring device that they say will provide a critical advance in the resolution of current planet-finding techniques, making the discovery of Earth-sized planets possible. The discovery of planets outside of...

Research presented at a recent astronomical conference is being hailed as ushering in a new era in the search for Earth-like planets by showing that they are more numerous than previously thought and that scientists can now analyze their atmospheres for...

A team of biologists and chemists is closing in on bringing non-living matter to life. It’s not as Frankensteinian as it sounds. Instead, a lab led by Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, is building simple cell models that can...

Astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have discovered a planet somewhat larger and more massive than Neptune orbiting a star 120 light-years from Earth. While Neptune has a diameter 3.8 times that of Earth and a mass 17 times...