Expert in ancient DNA and wildlife forensics helps identify Oct. 7 massacre victims

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.

How can Israel address rampant food insecurity? - opinion

The government can take significant steps toward eradicating food insecurity and creating a fair and sustainable food system for all Israelis.

New variety can grow with half as much water; study comes as tomato prices expected to surge

Israeli researchers have developed a new variety of tomato that is more resistant to drought conditions and could help farmers cope with the destructive impact of climate change.

An in-depth genetic analysis led by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Shai Torgeman and Professor Dani Zamir identified interactions between two areas of the tomato’s genome that lead to increased yield and resistance to dry conditions.

The resulting new tomato variety, which has yet to be named, can cope with extreme weather conditions. The study’s findings were published on Monday in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) journal.

“Commercial tomato breeds grown in open-field conditions and that you find in supermarkets on average require 317,000 gallons per acre each season,” Shai Torgeman, a doctoral candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told The Media Line. “In our study, we cut this water amount in half and got great results.”

To achieve this, scientists crossbred two species of tomatoes – a wild variety that comes all the way from the deserts of western Peru, with a common commercial cultivar that is widely available.

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.

The exclusive patent, awarded in February by the US Patent and Trademark Office, protects the company’s intellectual property and covers the methods and systems Wilk developed for the cultivation and separation of milk components from cultured cells, as the company now turns its focus on processes that increase production volume, said Wilk CEO Tomer Aizen.

For the animal-derived cultured milk, Wilk uses mammal cells “that are then grown and cultivated” in bioreactors, combined with a “secret sauce,” Aizen told The Times of Israel in a videoconference interview in February, referring to processes based on a decade of proprietary research by Dr. Nurit Argov-Argaman and Maggie Levy of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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.