These brief summaries of MIT research are drawn from several sources and are issued throughout the year. More information on any of these stories can be obtained by contacting Elizabeth Thomson at the MIT News Office. In some cases, photos may be available for news organizations.
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Videorealistic Animation of the Human Face |
Understanding Cartilage |
 Artificially animating a human face: The top row is a real background sequence of Mary 101 recorded by the researchers. The middle row is an animation of the synthetic mouth generated in the lab. The bottom row shows the synthetic mouth animation superimposed on the background sequence. Image courtesy Tony F. Ezzat, MIT |
Videorealistic Animation of the Human Face. Mary 101's face belongs to a real person, but her image is now a video ventriloquist's dummy. MIT researchers Tomaso Poggio and Tony Ezzat can make her say anything they want. To date, artificially animated human faces have looked jerky and unrealistic. Poggio, an investigator with MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and Ezzat, an MIT graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science, have simulated mouth movements that look so real, most viewers can't tell that Mary 101 isn't an ordinary videotape of a person speaking. Given a few minutes of footage of any individual, the researchers can pair virtually any audio to any videotaped face, matching mouth movements to the words. Poggio, a professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, can imagine a future in which a celebrity such as Michael Jordan may sell his image and the right to create a virtual video version of himself for advertising and other purposes. Or maybe the estates of John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe or Elvis Presley would be willing to have the performers make a virtual comeback -- for a price. "This technique is inevitable -- it's just another step in progress that has happened over the last several years," said Poggio. The work is funded by the NSF and NTT through the NTT-MIT Research Collaboration.
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Combatting AIDS. A form of RNA developed at MIT has inhibited replication of HIV-1 virus in human-derived cell lines, potentially showing a new way to combat AIDS. The in vitro work uses RNA interference (RNAi), a naturally occurring technology used by a variety of organisms to silence genes. "If many obstacles can be surmounted, this could be a basis for intervention in HIV treatment," said Professor of Biology and Nobel Laureate Phillip Sharp, director of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Funding is from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the National Cancer Institute.
Battling Alzheimer's. A group of existing compounds with known biological properties -- some already FDA-approved for various uses -- may turn out to reverse the effects of early- to mid-stage Alzheimer's disease, MIT researchers reported recently. Vernon Ingram, a professor of biology, and colleagues found that some compounds reverse a process caused by the beta-amyloid plaques that attack the brains of Alzheimer's patients. The work is funded by the John and Dorothy Wilson Fund and the Kurt and Johanna Immerwahr Fund for Alzheimer Research at MIT.
Memory Retrieval. For the first time, researchers have identified a gene involved in the retrieval of long-term memories. The study appeared in the journal Science. Nobel laureate Susumu Tonegawa, director of MIT's Picower Center for Learning and Memory and a professor of biology and neuroscience, said his latest discovery may lead to drugs that would counter the memory loss that plagues Alzheimer's victims and relieve middle-agers' "senior moments." Studies have shown that older people have not lost their memories -- they just have trouble retrieving them. Similarly, the genetically altered mice in the MIT study have no trouble forming a long-term memory of a specific place, but they cannot retrieve the information with a limited number of cues. This process, called pattern completion, is believed to be a crucial step in the retrieval of memories. For these studies, Tonegawa generated and analyzed mice with a genetically altered hippocampus, a brain structure that has been shown to play a crucial role in common types of memories. Tonegawa's coauthors are from MIT, Baylor College of Medicine, and the Hokkaido University School of Medicine The work is supported by NIH, RIKEN, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Human Frontier Science Program.
Understanding Cartilage. The molecular "bristles" key to cartilage function are revealing new secrets thanks to novel nanoscale mechanical measurements by MIT researchers that will also help characterize other components of the tissue that cushions our joints. Understanding cartilage function -- and dysfunction -- on a molecular level could lead to cures for diseases such as osteoarthritis and techniques for repairing cartilage damaged in accidents. The new work, to be reported in the journal Macromolecules, represents the first direct measurements of the nanoscale forces between a surface of real "bristle" cartilage molecules and a tiny probe tip of known geometry and chemistry. The results give insights into bristle behavior and structure. In the near future, the team also plans to look at the molecular behavior of diseased cartilage. The work is led by Christine Ortiz, an assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Alan Grodzinsky, a professor in the Biological Engineering Division, the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Other colleagues are from MIT and the University of South Florida. The work was sponsored by the Dupont-MIT Alliance, the NIH, the Whitaker Foundation, and the Shriners of North America.
Biorubber. Scientists from around the world have been contacting an MIT lab for samples of "biorubber," a new material with myriad applications such as engineered lungs and heart valves. Although biodegradable polymers have already been used in the human body for medical purposes, none of these polymers has had the defining property of a rubber band: the ability to stretch then snap back to an original shape. The work, sponsored by NIH, was led by Robert Langer, MIT's Germeshausen Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, and was announced in the June issue of Nature Biotechnology.
Zebrafish 'Recipe.' In a big step toward identifying a "genetic construction kit" for animal development, MIT researchers report in Nature Genetics that they have identified 75 genes required to create a baby zebrafish. The researchers' quest is to identify a large proportion of the 2,400 necessary genes. This is the first time anyone has reported in one fell swoop such a large number of genes required for the embryonic development of a vertebrate. MIT Professor of Biology Nancy Hopkins says each of the 75 genes identified in the study has at least some similarity with a known human gene, and a few are known to be involved in human diseases such as diabetes and cancer. Hopkins' collaborators are from MIT and the University of Texas at Austin. The work is funded by the NIH and Amgen.
Hungry Pulsar. MIT scientists have found a pulsar in a binary star system that has all but completely whittled away its companion star, leaving this companion only about 10 times more massive than Jupiter. The system has one of the lowest-mass companions of any stellar binary. The finding provides clear evidence that neutron stars can slowly steal material from their companions and dramatically increase their spin rate, ultimately evolving into the isolated, radio wave-emitting pulsars spinning a thousand times per second -- the type commonly seen scattered throughout the Milky Way galaxy. Ron Remillard of MIT's Center for Space Research discovered the pulsar along with colleagues at NASA.