Allessandra DiCorato, Ph.D.

Scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Harvard Medical School, and McLean Hospital have discovered a surprising mechanism by which the inherited genetic mutation known to cause Huntington’s disease leads to the death of brain cells. The findings change the understanding of the fatal neurodegenerative disorder and suggest potential ways to delay or even prevent it.
For 30 years, researchers have known that Huntington’s is caused by an inherited mutation in the Huntingtin (HTT) gene...

I’d always thought that moving to Boston would be like coming home. Chicago, where I’d spent the previous six years in grad school, had felt overlarge and wide, like a borrowed coat that had warmed to my shape but never really fit. I’d come to love my neighborhood, even the winters, but the city’s sprawling streets never really felt like mine. Boston, by contrast, was as dense as the New England I’d known as a child, the highway leading to it forest-lined and familiar. I’d looked forward to movi...

In 2003, during Europe’s worst heat wave in centuries, almost 15,000 people died in France. About three-quarters of those deaths occurred indoors, and approximately 80% of the people who died were over 75, an age at which people tend to be less capable of perceiving heat and less well-equipped to adapt to it.

In the coming years of mounting climate change, people around the world — particularly older adults — are expected to be similarly vulnerable. But though scientists know a lot about heat,...

Early in February of 2008, just days after she was born, Tatiana Legkiy lay in a cardiac intensive care unit, her tiny body hooked up to a respirator. After crying for two hours, she was now briefly quiet, the tube in her throat helping her breathe but also preventing her from making any sound.
Tatiana’s heart was failing. A cardiologist, tipped off by a pediatrician who heard something strange in a routine checkup, had examined her earlier that day and grown worried. He sent Tatiana to a nearby...