Overview
The Department of Biological Regulation is comprised of approximately 170 people organized in 13 research groups. We are located in the Candiotty and Britannia buildings, which are equipped with all the facilities required for running an excellent research. Our research is concentrated on the regulation of processes responsible for the concerted action of cells, tissues, and organs. A diversity of methodologies and experimental approaches are used in order to tackle these issues. These include biochemical, molecular, physiological methods, organ and tissue cultures, and whole animal studies in mice, flies, and zebra fish. In addition, some of us are using systems biology, host-pathogen studies and a variety of imaging methods including biological magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as well. Since de-regulation of such processes is a cause for many human diseases (cancer, heart failure, stroke, and abnormal growth, infertility, lack of regeneration after injury, etc.), we make an effort to use our results for the development of tools for early diagnosis and for the design of new drugs for pharmacological intervention.
The main projects that are currently performed in the department are:
Host-pathogen interactions – Dr. Roi Avraham
The control of reproduction – Prof. Emeritus Nava Dekel
Cell metabolism in health and disease – Dr. Ayelet Erez
Apoptosis Metabolism – Prof. Atan Gross
Protein degradation by the ubiquitin/proteasome system – Prof. Ami Navon
Vascularization during pregnancy and cancer development – Prof. Michal Neeman
ECM remodeling: from biophysical principles to drug design – Prof. Irit Sagi
Intracellular signaling cascades in health and disease – Prof. Rony Seger
Genome and epigenome regulation – Prof. Amos Tanay
lincRNA function – Dr. Igor Ulitsky
The development of the vascular system – Dr. Karina Yaniv
Growth factors and their receptors in cancer – Prof. Yossi Yarden