Faculty scientists Professors Ido Braslavsky and Oded Shoseyov develop technique to print food according to pre-defined criteria in a process that will serve a variety of special-needs populations.
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.
They cannot simply choose pollen from flowers high in omega-3 because increasing urbanization has decimated many kinds of wildflowers. The resulting nutritional imbalance is a major reason why honeybees, responsible for the pollination of more than 90 commercial food crops across the world, are dying at an alarming rate.
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.
Article in 52 Insights, a web periodical which "publish(es) a simple, concise interview with one unique and engaging individual or collective each week."
Oded Shoseyov has arguably one of the most unique jobs in the world. A nano-biotechnologist, he is tasked with mining nature for its most adaptive and essential qualities, utilising them for human and industrial purposes.
The genome sequence of wild emmer wheat was determined by an international group of scientists headed by Dr Assaf Distelfeld. Wild Emmer wheat is the original form of nearly all the domesticated wheat in the world, including durum (pasta) and bread wheat. Wild emmer is too low-yielding to be of use to farmers today, but it contains many attractive characteristics that are being used by plant breeders to improve wheat.
Dr Zvi Peleg of the Faculty's Institute of Plant Sciences and Genetics took part in the research.
Dr Distelfeld and Dr Gil Ronen began their careers with studies at the Faculty.
Our congratulations to all!
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.
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.
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.
"In first-of-its-kind research, a 10-member international team of scientists, led by Maor Matzrafi of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ittai Herrmann from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and UC Davis agricultural entomologist Christian Nansen, used hyperspectral technologies to successfully predict the viability of the weed seeds and herbicide response. The research, published in the current edition of Frontiers of Plant Science, (here) offers growers of cotton, soybean, corn, watermelon and other crops a new tool in their toolbox to thwart the growth of the herbicide-resistant Palmer amaranth, a fast-growing and highly aggressive weed which cripples crop yields."
Hebrew University researchers remotely detect buried landmines, using fluorescent bacteria encased in polymeric beads, illuminated by a laser-based scanning system. Prof. Amos Nussinovitch of the Institute of Biochemistry created the polymeric beads encapsulating the baterial detectors.
H
ow Israel Can Help Stem Over-Fishing in the South China Sea using Professor Jaap Van Rijn's “zero-discharge” fish farming system.
OAR/National Undersea Research Program (NURP) wikimedia commons
62% of school-age children and 85% of pregnant women in Israel have low iodine intakes, according to the country's first national iodine survey. Government funding and legislation, and a government-regulated program of salt or food iodization, are essential to reducing the deficiency, which poses a high risk of impaired neurological development.
From left, researchers Dov Gefel, Yaniv Ovadia, Aron Troen and Jonathan Arbelle
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170327083438.htm
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
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....."
