Integrated Calendar

Personalized medicine aims the tailoring of strategies to detect, treat, and prevent disease based on an individual’s genetic fingerprint or makeup. Although several advances have been made in molecular profiling technologies to obtain and analyze vast amount of personal information, this technologies has yet to prove their use for drug-personalized treatment.
We have developed a novel approach that could solve this existing gap between the identification of disease biomarkers within the acquired personalized biological data and their potential for drug-personalized treatment. We use image based high content analysis (HCA) to identify the disease phenotype in cells from patients with neurodegenerative and rare diseases. This technology obtains the personal biological information from multiple images taken from thousands of cells isolated from skin biopsies of patients allowing us to identify specific disease signatures or disease phenotypes based on the ! individual’s cell biology. These disease signatures will enable us to screen thousands of drugs on patient cells and to isolate potential drugs for personalized treatment. This approach will contribute a great deal to the evolving field of personalized medicine in general and to the field of diagnosis and treatment of incurable neurodegenerative and rare diseases. The Cell Screening Facility for Personalized Medicine (CSFPM) which is part of the new Blavatnik Center for Drug Development (BCDD) at TAU, aims to find potential drugs for treatment of rare diseases like Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Familial Dysautonomia (FD), Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), Adult Polyglucosan Body Disease (APBD) and others.

Abstract: Here, I present an overview of the various NMR and EPR methods that we used
to derive the first full-scale atomic-resolution description of an intrinsically disordered
human amyloid protein in five different mammalian cell types, including cells of neuronal
and non-neuronal origins. Furthermore, I present an outlook towards using these tools to
studying intracellular aggregation processes and preliminary data on different aggregate
structures that form in response to cellular stress conditions.

Do quantum many-body systems necessarily come to thermal equilibrium after a long enough time evolution? The conventional wisdom has long been that they do and that, in the process, any quantum information encoded in the initial state is lost irretrievably. Thus the dynamics of many-interacting particles becomes effectively classical. But these ingrained notions of thermalization and ergodicity have recently been called into question. In this talk I will discuss how ergodicity can break down in disordered quantum systems through the phenomenon of many-body localization. In contrast to thermalizing fluids, quantum correlations can persist through time evolution of the localized state even at high energy densities. Thus, investigating the many-body localization transition offers a concrete route to address fundamental unsolved questions concerning the boundary between classical and quantum physics in the macroscopic world. I will emphasize the important role that quantum entanglement plays in current attempts to understand this fascinating dynamical phase transition. Finally I will present recent progress in confronting the emerging theoretical understanding of many-body localization with experimental tests using systems of ultra-cold atoms.

Stabilization of the Dead Sea (DS) level
Is the Red Sea-Dead Sea Water Conveyance a feasible solution?
By
Michael Beyth, Geological Survey
The seminar will discuss the:
• Limnological background-DS a hypersaline terminal lake.
• Environmental impacts of the DS level decline-sinkholes and infrastructure.
• The idea- from 1840.
• Is the Red Sea – Dead Sea Conveyance a feasible solution?-the only solution to manage the DS level.
• The recent feasibility study 2008-2013.
The three major goals for the project defined in this recent study were: 1. to stabilize the Dead Sea water level by conveying up to 1,200 MCM/y of reject; 2. to desalinate up to 850 MCM/y mainly for Jordan; 3. to serve as a symbol of peace between the three Beneficiary Parties, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The project was managed by the World Bank navigated by the Steering Committee of the Beneficiary Parties,. This study followed Harza (1996) pre-feasibility study.
Six reports were published
• Tech./econo. feasibility study by Coyne et Bellier.
• Environmental and social assesment by ERM.
• Dead Sea Study by Tahal&GSI.
• Red Sea study by Tethis&IINS,Jur.Uni., IOLR.
• Study of Alternatives by Allen, Malkawi and Tsur.
• Chemical industry analysis study (Zbranek).
The reports are available at Web-site (www.worldbank.org/rds).
Pilot-first phase –tender stage now
• a limited desalination plant of ~80 MCM/y at Aqaba.
• 35 MCM/y of desalinated water will be bought by Israel and transferred to the Israeli Arava Valley.
• The rest will be used by Jordan for Aqaba and dilution of the DISI aquifer pipeline to Amman.
• The reject brine together with more sea water (should be 200 MCM/y together) will be piped to the Lisan "Lagoon", at the south-east corner of the Dead Sea.
• Possible small Hydro-Electric plant will be built in Ghor Pipa, Jordan, producing ~30 MW.
• On December 9th 2013 an MOU was signed in Washington by Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, speaking also about Israel to sell to Jordan another 50 MCM/y from Lake Kinneret and about Israel to sell the Palestinian Authority another 20-30 MCM/y of water through the current water supply system.
• On February 26th 2015 an implementation agreement was signed between Israel and Jordan that defines the implement process of the Red – Dead Pilot, including water swap between the countries.
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Previous studies have suggested that mRNAs encoding integral membrane proteins (MPRs) are delivered to membrane-bound ribosomes, but how they actually target the membrane remains unknown. We have previously proposed that MPRs may be recognized through uracil-rich segments that encode hydrophobic transmembrane helices. Recently we showed that MPRs are specifically recognized by the E. coli protein, CspE, in a translation independent manner. To further investigate the hypothesis of translation-independent targeting of MPRs to membrane-associated ribosomes, we performed a high-throughput analysis of the cellular distribution of mRNAs. The results confirmed that MPRs are overrepresented on the membrane, as expected. Surprisingly, however, the results also showed that MPRs are relatively abundant in the cytosolic, ribosomal-free fraction. We propose that the “free” form of MPRs represents a stage during their targeting to the membrane in a translation-independent manner. Remarkably, we demonstrate that cold shock proteins, which were shown to interact with MPRs, play a role in linking the intriguing subcellular localization of MPRs with their translation into integral membrane proteins.