לוח שנה משולב

Throughout the history of neuroscience, a large set of model systems has been used for studying a large variety of questions. These model systems were frequently chosen for their unique experimental advantages, but studying them also provided a wider perspective on basic questions: By examining the manifestation of a given biological phenomenon across different species, one could separate the salient or fundamental from the transient or variable. In my talk I will focus on two of our studies in reptiles: sleep in bearded dragons and visual processing in red eared sliders. I will show how we can use turtles for understanding structure function relations in neural circuits and how we can use lizards for exploring the organization of collective activity during sleep. In addition, I will show that such studies provide a new u! nderstanding of the evolution of brain dynamics.

Our ability to cure infectious diseases is greatly limited by a lack of understanding of the way many pathogens evade the human innate immune system. This is indeed the case when it comes to the parasite Plasmodium falciparum (P. falciparum), the leading infectious agent of Malaria, one of the most devastating infectious diseases in humans.
We show that while growing within human red blood cells, the parasites secrete extracellular vesicles containing genomic DNA, RNA and proteins. These vesicles are taken up by human monocytes, the DNA species are then released within the host cytosol leading to cytosolic STING-dependent DNA sensing. Additionally, we provide the evidence that internalization of late stage (trophozoite) P. falciparum-derived vesicles by monocytes prompts the activation of a known master regulator transcription factor, NF-kB. The activated NF-kB is then translocated to the nucleus to induce transcription of a target gene. Our finding opens a new line of investigation concerning the function of the vesicle DNA and RNA cargo components. This newly discovered crosstalk mechanism strongly supports the existence of a 'manipulation strategy' of the host immune environment by the deadly pathogen, P. falciparum parasite.

Redcap – a new system for working with clinical online questionnaires
Hello all,
We would like to bring to your attention that we have recently installed REDCap at
the Weizmann Institute. REDCap is a secure web application for building and
managing online surveys and databases, used by thousands of academic institutions
and hospitals around the world.
Using REDCap, you can easily create online questionnaires or surveys, and collect
responses from your collaborators anywhere, or even from survey participants who
are not logged in. This is particularly useful for clinical projects, but can be used for
any project that requires collecting data from multiple collaborators.
The REDCap interface is user-friendly, and no coding experience is needed to start a
new project and create your own questionnaires.
After the data is collected, it can be exported easily to Excel or any common statistical
packages (e.g. SPSS, SAS, Stata, R).
You can read more about REDCap at https://www.project-redcap.org/
The Weizmann installation of REDCap is at https://redcap.weizmann.ac.il/
If you just want to check it out without registering, a demo version is available (only
from within the institute) at http://demohealth.weizmann.ac.il/.
Do not enter any important/confidential data in the demo version!
If you have any questions, or would like to register to REDCap, please contact
Ron Rotkopf (ron.rotkopf@weizmann.ac.il) at the LSCF Bioinformatics unit.
The demonstration will be held at Candiotty auditorium on Tuesday, May 29th, at 11:00.
Registration is not required, but if you plan to come, please take a minute to answer this
anonymous survey:
http://j.mp/2rtn7a6
The survey was created in Redcap, and we will use it as an example of creating a
questionnaire and collecting data.