Dr idan Efroni, of the Robert H. Smith Institute of Plant Sciences and Genetics in Agriculture, was chosen as one of forty-one scientists from 16 countries as an International Research Scholar by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, to early-career scientists poised to advance biomedical research across the globe.
Idan Efroni is unraveling the mystery of plants’ impressive regenerative abilities. He uses tomatoes to study adventitious root meristems, which house stem cells that help form roots with stems or leaves. Insight into this process might reveal clues about tissue regeneration in other organisms, and help scientists boost plant production for agriculture.
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has teamed up with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation to develop scientific talent around the world, and will award a total of nearly $26.7 million to this group of scholars. Each researcher will receive a total of $650,000 over five years. The award is a big boon for scientists early in their careers, and offers the freedom to pursue new research directions and creative projects that could develop into top-notch scientific programs.
“This is an outstanding group of scientists who will push biomedical research forward worldwide, and we are thrilled to support them alongside our philanthropic partners,” said David Clapham, HHMI’s Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer.
The scientists selected as International Research Scholars represent a diverse array of scientific disciplines and geographic locations. Scholars hail from research organizations and institutions from across the world, from Tanzania to Cambodia to Chile to Austria. Their research covers a broad variety of biological and medical research areas too, including neuroscience, genetics, biophysics, computational biology, and parasitology.
Decoding the genetic basis of floret fertility in wheat - A high grain yield is undoubtedly a desirable trait in cereal crops. Floret fertility is a key factor which determines the number of grains per inflorescence of cereals such as bread wheat or barley. Nonetheless, until recently little was known about its genetic basis. Whilst investigating floret fertility, a group of researchers have now discovered the locus Grain Number Increase 1 (GNI1), an important contributor to floret fertility. A writeup from Science Daily of an international collaboration, including researchers from the Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, to decode the genetic basis of floret fertility in wheat.
Unleashing floret fertility in wheat through the mutation of a homeobox gene
Times of Israel, Dec 11th 2023
Expert in ancient DNA and wildlife forensics helps identify Oct. 7 massacre victims
Hebrew University Prof. Gila Kahila Bar-Gal uses her knowledge of difficult DNA extraction and physical anthropology as she volunteers at Abu Kabir
Smart pest management for fruit, nut and grape growers
FieldIn’s software helps commercial farmers eliminate spraying mistakes, reducing the number of sprays and overall use of pesticides on their crops. By Abigail Klein Leichman, Israel21c - "Controlling pests with minimal spraying is a difficult balancing act for commercial growers. And surprisingly, they don’t have a reliable mechanism to assure that the right quantity reaches every tree or vine; some may be missed or over-sprayed. Israeli ag-tech startup FieldIn innovated an end-to-end pest-management software to achieve that balance with input from innovative tractor hardware and a host of agronomic data....."
A unique antibiotic that can kill bacteria that are resistant to conventional antibacterials without damaging the cells that store them has been developed by scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The pioneering study was carried out by Dr. Zvi Hayouka and colleagues.
I24 News Story about the first academic course in Israel in wine-making - the next step in growing the local wine industry
in French:
En Français
Prof. Ron Ofri discovered natural day-blindness in sheep and together with colleagues developed a genetic treatment for a similar type of day-blindness in humans. Prof. Ofri recently received a prize for his research from the Hebrew University. Nature published a "Careers" feature on Prof. Ofri in the May 25th issue.
What do you get when you combine the strongest materials from the plant world with the most elastic ones from the insect kingdom? Super-performing materials that might transform ... everything. Nanobiotechnologist Prof. Oded Shoseyov of our Faculty walks us through examples of amazing materials found throughout nature, in everything from cat fleas to sequoia trees, and shows the creative ways his team is harnessing them in everything from sports shoes to medical implants.
Journal club article in PNAS about BitterPredict, a machine learning tool that predicts whether a chemical tastes bitter. BitterPredict was developed by members of Prof Masha Niv's lab.
Prof. Zohar Kerem of the Institute of Biochemistry, Food Science and Nutrition was interviewed on CTV Ottawa about olive oil and the principles of the mediterranean diet. Professor Kerem was in Canada to promote the new International MSc in Viticulture and Enology
EurekAlert!, Nov 8th 2023
NEWS RELEASE 8-NOV-2023
Plant lifecycle insights: Big data can predict climate change impact
A new study published in Nature offers a paradigm shift regarding lifecycles in the plant world, and uses big data to predict the future impact of climate change
Peer-Reviewed Publication
THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM
The study is based on a new database created by the researchers which combines, for the first time, datasets on distribution and datasets on lifecycles, making it possible to establish the prevalence of different lifecycles around the globe. It uses empirical tools and big data to examine theoretical paradigms about the way in which human disturbance is affecting annual plants and their global distribution. Among other things, it was found that annuals are expected to benefit more with the rise in human population density and due to climate change, which could prove devastating for the ecosystem.
Sea2Cell, which is developing cultured blue tuna, was founded in September 2021 in the Fresh Start food-tech incubator in Kiryat Shmona by Avishai Levy, Dr. Itai Tzchori, Pablo Resnik, Prof. Berta Sivan and Dr. Orna Harel. The company has raised NIS 3.5 million.
Prof. Sivan came to the fish alternatives sector from the fish industry itself. As a professor of biology at the Hebrew University Faculty of Agriculture she set up a company for accelerating the fish farming process. She was involved in another project in Africa to advance fish farming of carp in pools. But she believes wild fish should be left alone.
Prof. Sivan has gained major knowhow in isolating cells from living tissues of fish in order to raise them. She was approached by Dr. Orna Harel who for years had been thinking about developing cultured fish. They were joined by Dr. Itai Tzchori, an expert in fish stem cells and Pablo Resnik who has been involved in international trade in fish and seafood. They set up the start up in the Fresh Start incubator, a partnership of Tnuva, Tempo, OurCrowd and Finister.
While stem cells of mammals have been produced for many years, partly in research institutes, there are very few fish stem cells produced. Sea2Cell is first of all building a massive stem cell production capacity, which can be transferred under concessions for other companies to manufacture the products. The aim is blue tuna. "Prof. Sivan said, "Even if we prevent the killing of one tuna, we would have achieved something."
Tuna is overfished worldwide and attempts to raise them in captivity have failed.
