Dr. Hila Toporik
Senior Lecturer (Assistant Professor)
Photosynthesis, Photosynthetic complexes, Assembly, cyanobacteria, membrane proteins, Cryo-EM
plant science and genetics
Dr. Guy Polturak
Senior Lecturer (Assistant Professor)
Plant Specialized Metabolism, Metabolic Engineering
Milk from Lettuce
NoCamels, Sep 1st 2022
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Pigmentum, a startup based in Kiryat Shmona, northern Israel, plants GM lettuce in hi-tech greenhouses, cultivates it with special fertilizers and harvests the crop when it’s ready, a little over three weeks later.
It then squeezes out the juice – over 90 per cent of lettuce is liquid – adds natural ingredients to give it a milk-like taste and smell, and has a product which is ready to drink, pour on your breakfast cereal or add to your coffee.
“Lettuce is green and leafy and doesn’t look the sort of thing you’d make cheese from,” says Tal Lutzky, CEO of the company. But as he explains, they use lettuce as an organism for growing many things, including casein.
He and co-founder Amir Tiroler both studied agronomy at Hebrew University’s Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment, with Prof. Alexander Vainstein, a world leader in genetic engineering in plants, and a member of their team.
Lutzky and Tiroler came up with the idea of using lettuce as a platform to grow a range of pigments, such as anthocyanin (the purple found in blueberries and raspberries) and vanillin, which makes vanilla, as well as aromas and other compounds used in the food industry, that are otherwise very costly or hard to produce.
They genetically modify romaine lettuce, then irrigate or spray it with a special fertilizer that triggers the growth of whatever they’ve encoded into its genes.
“We engineer the lettuce to produce whatever we want in very, very high yields, in this case casein, to make milk,” says Lutzky.
Ordinary lettuce contains no casein at all. It’s only by genetically modifying it that they have been able to turn ordinary-looking lettuce becomes a platform or a vehicle for casein production.
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Dr. Yotam Zait
Senior Lecturer (Assistant Professor)
Photosynthesis and water use efficiency improvement in crops, optimizing mesophyll conductance to CO2, guard cell physiology
Cannabis Strain with 20% More THC
31 May, 2022
A WORLD FIRST: Hebrew University Engineers Enhanced Cannabis Strain with 20% More THC
Findings will Help Develop New Strains for Medical Cannabis Users and Increase Crop Yields
(Jerusalem, May 31, 2022)—Throughout the world, the cannabis plant is gaining in popularity and legitimacy as a medical treatment for a broad range of illnesses. Now, researchers at the laboratory of Professor Alexander (Sasha) Vainstein at the Hebrew University of Jerusalerm (HU)’s Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment, in partnership with and funding from Mariana Bioscience Ltd, have successfully engineered a cannabis plant with higher levels of medically-important substances, such as THC.
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The researchers successfully increased the level of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the main psychoactive component in cannabis, by close to 17%, and the level of CBG (cannabigerol), often referred to as the mother of all cannabinoids, by close to 25%. Further, Vainstein and his team were able to increase the ratio of terpenes, which are responsible for maximizing the euphoric effects of cannabis, by 20–30%.
The stated goal of their study was to find a way to intervene in the biochemical pathways in the cannabis plant in order to increase or decrease the production of active substances. The researchers accomplished this by manipulating a plant-based virus, that had first been neutralized so that it could not harm the plant, and then manipulating it to express the genes that influence the production of active substances in the cannabis plant. “This represents an innovative use of these tools, which were constructed using synthetic biology tools,” explained Vainstein. “Next, we developed an innovative technology based on infection with an engineered virus to facilitate chemical reactions that increase the quantities of desired substances. In collaboration with Mariana Bioscience Ltd., we examined the infected plants and found that the levels of the substances in question had indeed risen.” This is the first time that researchers have succeeded in performing such a feat with cannabis plants.
Currently, there is a great deal of research activity aimed at identifying additional substances and medical treatments that can be derived from the cannabis plant, in addition to the more than 200 active ingredients that have already been identified. Until now, there had been no way to tailor strains to produce certain cannabis substances or to alter the ratio between them. According to Vainstein, “These study results will be valuable both to industry—to increase the yield of active substances, and to medical researcher—to cultivate and develop new strains for medical cannabis users.” Vainstein added that more extensive experiments with the engineered plant are currently underway and should be available to cannabis industry leaders and medical research in the next few months.
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Dr. Niv De-Malach
Senior Lecturer (Assistant Professor)
Competition and biodiversity in plant communities
Prof. Eli Zamski
Emeritus
Peanut crop improvement, Sugar metabolism in melon fruits, Petunia flowers development, Effects of salt stress on citrus cultures.
Prof. Elisha Tel-Or
Emeritus
Plant Responses to Environmental Abiotic Stresses; Phytoremediation of industrial sludges by the Nymphae is being developed for polluted sludge in Haifa Bay.
Prof. Amnon Schwartz
Emeritus
Building A
Plant water relations, Plant gas exchange, Irrigation scheduling of orchards and vineyards based on physiological parameters.
Prof. Baruch Rubin
Emeritus
Building A
Weed biology and management; herbicide physiology and action in crops, weeds and environment; Mechanisms of herbicide-resistance in weeds.
Prof. Joseph Riov
Emeritus
Kennedy Leigh A, room 220
Mechanisms of controlling adventitious root formation, with an emphasis on auxin activity and metabolism. Genetics of forest trees. Abscission control of plant organs.
Prof. Haim D. Rabinowitch
Emeritus
Kennedy Leigh A
Vegetable physiology, breeding & seed production, esp. tomatoes, alliums, and potatoes.