Postdoc positions

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Regulation of gene expression at the transcriptional and translational levels is fundamental to all biological activities and is frequently altered in disease states. Our broad research interests are (i) to elucidate how the transcription and translation processes control the cellular response to enviromental stimuli; (ii) to reveal the connections between the transcription and translation processes and (iii) to develop tools to manipulate these processes for the potential treatment of cancer, chronic inflammation and neurodegenrative diseases.

OPEN PhD and Post-Doc positions: Applicants with a strong research background at the intersection of molecular biology, biochemistry, imaging and/or biophysics are encouraged to apply. Experience in microbiology, molecular genetics (including CRISPR/Cas9), advanced imaging platforms (including image analysis) or advanced protein chemistry is advantageous. This is a full-time position available from June 2022 for a period of two years with a possibility of a further extension subject to funding availability. Candidate should send a cover letter and CV (includes a publication list) to Dr. Neta Regev-Rudzki. For any informal inquiries please contact us by email at neta.regev-rudzki@weizmann.ac.il

Motivated and creative students with background in molecular biology are invited to join our studies of the mechanisms by which signaling by the TNF family contributes to immune defense, to chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases and to cancer, and our attempts to derive from this knowledge new ways of therapy. See our website and list of publications for the range of research subjects that we are exploring and for the range of experimental approaches that we are applying. (https://www.weizmann.ac.il/Biomolecular_Sciences/Wallach/home)

Membrane proteins make up a quarter of the proteome of every living organism and participate in nearly every biological process. We are interested in the fascinating process of how these proteins get produced, fold, and assemble in cells. The questions we address are: How do proteins fold in the membranes of living cells? How do the dynamic features of unfolded proteins assist in this process? How do cellular factors recognize membrane proteins that failed to fold and need to be cleared? The lab combines biochemical, cell biology, genetic and computational tools. For more details, visit http://www.weizmann.ac.il/Biomolecular_Sciences/Fluman  

• Clocks resetting | Recently, we have developed a new method to study resetting agents in vitro in an efficient and high-throughput manner, dubbed Circa-SCOPE (Manella et al., Nature Communication 2021). This methodology opens the door to a wide range of applications, in both basic and translational research. For example, it allows screening multiple drugs (in-use or newly developed) in parallel to identify which affects the clock and how – with high relevance to chrono-medicine. It also allows the experimental testing of different models of clock resetting quantitatively. Hence, it opens the door to a wide range of basic and translational research opportunities.

The relevant projects address the influence of circadian clocks on exercise performance, and training efficiency, as well as the effect of chronotype, feeding, and hypoxia on exercise capacity.

Circadian clocks are key regulators of daily physiology and metabolism in mammals. Our understanding of the role of the circadian clock and specific clock proteins in controlling exercise capacity is rudimentary. Consequently, there is growing interest in exercise biology in general, specifically in its interaction with other processes that govern whole-body physiology and metabolism. We have reported that mice show a day-time variance in exercise capacity, and it is affected by exercise intensity and clock proteins and elicits a distinct muscle transcriptomic and metabolic signature. Specifically, we demonstrated that ZMP, an AMPK activator, is induced by exercise in a daytime-dependent manner. We continue to study various aspects of exercise physiology through the lens of circadian biology (Ezagouri et al., Cell Metabolism, 2019; Adamovich et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 2021.).

We employ various clock mutant mouse models with different light regimens to characterize the interaction between clocks and exercise. Further, we have designed and built fully automated time-controlled Running Wheels that can be programmed in advance to be in locked or unlocked positions for designated times to enable scheduled training of animals without manual interventions. This experimental setup is optimized for addressing questions regarding the involvement of daytime and circadian clocks in regulating exercise capacity (Adamovich et al., STAR Protocols, 2021).

We are also studying the molecular clock and skeletal muscle metabolism in health and disease.

In our research, we focus on the following aspects of beta cell function:

1. The transcriptional mechanisms underlying the normal embryonic development of beta cells and the functioning of mature beta cells
2. Manipulating pancreatic cellular identity: molecular mechanisms controlling exocrine to endocrine cell reprogramming
3. Dissecting the signaling mechanism that permit  beta cells to respond to modulators of insulin secretion, in particular long chain and short chain fatty acids

See:

https://www.weizmann.ac.il/Biomolecular_Sciences/Walker/