How many types of mushrooms are there in the world? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Millions? Surprisingly, there is no clear answer, as entire portions of the mushroom kingdom have yet to be studied. However, in recent years, this lapse is being reversed. Because of their potential usefulness, especially in fields related to the environment and combating the climate crisis, mushrooms are now being analyzed under the microscope more than ever.
Noam Attias
Mushrooms are now at the forefront of scientific research and are being studied for treating industrial waste, dissolving plastic residue that floats on water, and contending with gas leaks from old-fashioned energy companies. In addition, research being carried out in the Technion’s Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning is evaluating the potential of using materials based on mushroom mycelium – the mass of thread-like filaments that make up the mushroom – as an environmentally friendly alternative to polluting raw materials such as plastics and Styrofoam.
Technion doctoral student Noam Attias is researching the subject under the supervision of the Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Professor Yasha (Jacob) Grobman, and the Chair of the Faculty’s Industrial Design program, Professor Ezri Tarazi. According to Ms. Attias, her research combines design concepts with aspects of biotechnology for the purpose of developing new materials and innovative outcomes that take advantage of the material’s attributes.
Ms. Attias, who has a B.A. in Industrial Design and a Master’s in Biotechnology, believes combining these two fields of knowledge paves the way to innovative applications. Because her research is groundbreaking, she must create new knowledge practically from scratch. “There is almost no research being conducted in Israel related to producing materials from mushroom mycelium,” she noted. “It is difficult for materials engineers to compare the traits of these materials with those of existing industrial materials because these behave differently. There is no standard to which they can be compared. Even the correct sample size is not known in advance.”
Ms. Attias’ research began as an attempt to create a new material from mushroom mycelium by growing them on various wood fiber media from local green waste. She studied the results from the perspective of their chemical composition, resistance to compression, weight, and water absorption, and was surprised to discover that they resemble … Styrofoam. As a result, she designed a jerrycan – a water container that looks like Styrofoam – that does not harm the environment like Styrofoam does. The innovation and creativity that Ms. Attias demonstrated in this process led the product to be displayed at the Rishon Lezion Museum for two years as part of an exhibition in which Prof. Tarazi participated with the Design-Tech lab he heads. At the same time, the research generated ideas for other sustainable substitutes: seedling protectors, packaging for plant seedlings, and even women’s hygiene products.
Convinced of the enormous advantages of using mushroom mycelium, Ms. Attias started developing nano-biological materials that combine mycelium with nanocellulose fibers, which are essential to the food packaging industry. Here too, the material developed by Ms. Attias has a huge advantage as far as reducing environmental damage is concerned. “During the joint development of the nanocellulose and the mycelium, we discovered that the nanocellulose becomes an integral part of the mushroom, thereby producing strong and durable material. We found out that the mushroom contributes to the nanocellulose’s resilience to humidity, thereby expanding its potential uses. As a result of the global environmental crisis, and certainly in the past year during which the use of disposable food packaging grew, the environmental value of packaging made from biodegradable materials is obvious.”
Ms. Attias considers herself to be a researcher in the unique niche that melds industrial design with environmental awareness. “There is a significant difference between materials developers and designers; while many researchers develop innovative materials but have difficulty finding efficient and significant applications for them, designers look for new materials suitable for sustainable products,” she said. “My goal is to bridge these two worlds, using knowledge and tools from my biotechnology studies and combining them with the way I think as a designer.”
Recently, Ms. Attias won the Jacobs Prize for an outstanding article. The prize is awarded by the Irwin and Joan Jacobs Graduate School, and she received it for the article published in the journal Advanced Sustainable Systems. Her article was also selected for the cover of that issue.
DNA can be seen as a cookbook, containing all the recipes needed by the human body. But how is a particular “recipe” picked out? How is it bookmarked? What decides how many portions are cooked? How do some recipes have variants, like a ravioli recipe might have alternative fillings? How are comments written on the margins, such as a good housewife might add: “for green apples, add more sugar”? All these functions are performed on the DNA by regulatory proteins.
Associate Professor Tali Haran
But how do the regulatory proteins recognize the precise place on the DNA they are supposed to bind? That is the focus of the research of Associate Professor Tali Haran from the Department of Biology at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.
In recent years, Prof. Haran’s laboratory has focused on one regulatory protein in particular: p53. Known as the “Guardian of the Genome”, p53 is capable of recognizing multiple types of cellular stress. After doing so, it can then activate DNA repair mechanisms, arrest the cell cycle, or even send the cell into a regulated death process. It thus acts as a tumor suppressor. Indeed, in more than 50% of cancers, p53 is damaged, and its function impaired, so understanding how p53 works is of particular importance.
The functional form of p53 is constructed from four subunits arranged in two pairs. Its activation depends on the binding of the two pairs together while attached to the DNA. There are, therefore, specific binding sites for them on the DNA strands – at each location, there is one binding site composed of two half sites, one for each pair. But there are great variations among these sites. Why this variation? What effect, if any, does it have? This is the question Prof. Haran’s team attempt to answer in their most recent study. (link)
As it turns out, each pair of p53 subunits is semi-attached right from the start – like two cherries joint by a twig. Attaching to their binding site on the DNA brings this pair close together, allowing them to form a more stable attachment. Next comes the joining of the second p53 pair. The DNA is more flexible in some parts, and more rigid in others. (That occurs because of the different building blocks it is made of.) A DNA region that is more flexible can swivel a bit, helping the two p53 subunits within one pair come together and stabilize their attachment to the DNA. A DNA region that is more rigid, by contrast, would not facilitate optimal contacts between the two p53 subunits of one pair and so need the help of the nearby pair residing on a flexible region, or just need more protein to come quickly together to the DNA and form fast a tetramer. An interesting finding of the research is that for most p53 binding sites in the human genome one half site is flexible, whereas the other is more rigid.
The group then proceeded to switch around the two p53 half sites of one specific p53 binding site. They were surprised to find that even such minute changes immediately affected p53 binding. This proves that the differences in the binding sites are not random, but instead allow great precision and nuance in p53’s activity. As for the rigidity/flexibility, this mechanism protects the binding area from being influenced by the sequences flanking the DNA from either side. If for some reason, due to some mutation, the DNA chain is changed and made more rigid or more flexible in the general area where p53 is supposed to get attached to the DNA, the individual binding sites, with their varied rigidity and flexibility, are able to compensate, holding the DNA in just the right shape for everything to come together.
The research team also included Dr. Alon Senitzki, Jessy Safieh, and Dr. Yael Danin-Poleg from the Department of Biology, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology; and Vasundhara Sharma and Professor Alberto Inga from the Department of Cellular, Computational and Integrative Biology (CIBIO), University of Trento.
3 March 2021 – The Peres Center for Peace and Innovation today granted eleven women from a diverse range of backgrounds and communities with its inaugural Medal of Distinction, ahead of International Women’s Day on 8 March. The award, which will be granted annually to mark International Women’s Day, honors the outstanding contributions of women in key positions and in a variety of fields.
The Medal of Distinction recognizes women who are breaking glass ceilings in their fields and serving as role models for women and girls in Israel and around the world. The citation for the award harnesses the words of Israel’s former President Shimon Peres, “You are as great as the cause you serve,” and honors leaders who “open doors” and create new opportunities for other women, contribute to gender equality and diversity in the workplace, and work tirelessly for a better world.
At the ceremony at the Peres Center, the Medal of Distinction was presented to recipients in the presence of Efrat Duvdevani (Director General of the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation), Professor Tsvia Walden (Board Member, Peres Center for Peace and Innovation and daughter of Shimon Peres) and Chemi Peres (Chairman, Peres Center for Peace and Innovation and son of Shimon Peres).
Efrat Duvdevani said, “During the past year, humanity has had to face complex challenges in which we have been privileged to see many brave, talented and creative women bring about significant change in key positions and roles in leadership, medicine, science, education, economics, and a variety of other areas.
“Ahead of International Women’s Day, the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation is proud and excited to establish a new tradition, in which we will bestow an annual award, the Medal of Distinction, to women who break new ground, who open doors and create opportunities for other women and contribute to gender equality. They are role models who are working towards creating a better world.”
Prof. Tsvia Walden said, “We join the women and men of the world who understand what our father said for many years, that as long as women are not an active and equal part in everything that happens in society and indeed the world, then our world will be worth only half.”
Chemi Peres said, “I grew up in an extraordinary home, where both my mother and sister were exemplary women with many accomplishments. Growing up in a house with two such women prepared me better for life. I welcome this new initiative and the tradition we have started here today.”
The following women became the first recipients of the Peres Center’s Medal of Distinction: Baroness Ariane de Rothschild,Dr. Orna Berry, Julia Zaher, Lili Ben Ami, Maysa Halabi, Hana Rado, Ruth Polczak, Yuvi Tashome-Katz, Professor Shulamit Levenberg, Shirin Natour-Hafi and Dr. Yael Gold-Zamir.
Baroness Ariane de Rothschild is a French banker and philanthropist. She is responsible for the Edmond de Rothschild Foundation’s support for projects dedicated to supporting art and culture, health and research, environment, social entrepreneurship and intercultural dialogue, directing funds annually for such initiatives. She said, “I loved Shimon Peres very much, he made sure to empower women from all walks of life, always made sure to promote diversity and acceptance of the other. I shall always remain grateful to him for the guidance he provided in asserting my own stance, not only as a wife and a mother, but also as a female banker in a business environment that all too often goes on stigmatizing women.”
Dr. Orna Berry is known as the “first lady” of Israeli high-tech. She is a scientist, high-tech entrepreneur, and senior executive in Israel’s science and technology sectors. She was the first woman to make an exit when she sold her company Ornet, which she founded for the European Siemens Corporation in 1995. Berry was also the first woman to serve as chief scientist in the Ministry of Economy, and one of the first women to run a huge multinational R&D center when she headed EMC-DELL. She said, “The range of women who are here today cover all the areas in need in the country today. With the right commitment and skills we can do it.”
Julia Zaher is an Arab-Israeli, Christian entrepreneur, as well as the owner and CEO of the Al-Arz factory. She is the first Arab woman to run a factory and serves as chair of the JDC’s ‘delivery’ fund. In 2019, Globes Magazine named her one of the 50 most influential women in Israel. In June 2020, Zahra announced that Al-Arz would donate funds to an NGO focused on supporting the LGBT community, with the aim of establishing an Arabic outreach program. This is the first time that an Arab-owned, Israeli food company has expressed public support for the LGBT community – an act which sparked controversy but was also undoubtedly groundbreaking.
She said, “My life was not easy, but I set a goal and used all my might to break the glass ceiling. Every obstacle gave me tremendous strength. Throw your fears into the sea. Believe it is your time and do it.”
Lili Ben Ami is the sister of the late Michal Sala, a woman who fell victim to domestic violence and was murdered by her partner. Following the tragedy, Ben Ami founded the Michal Sala Forum and began working to shift the discourse around domestic violence from a discussion of victimhood, to a discussion of solutions. Through her work at the Forum, Ben Ami aims to harness the technology and capabilities of the “Startup Nation” to fulfill her vision of putting an end to violence against women. She said, “Shimon Peres said that International Women’s Day should be called Humanity Day because a society that harms women is a society without humanity. A man who harms a woman harms and destroys the future of his children.”
Maysa Halabi is a Druze entrepreneur who founded the Lotus project, which trains religious Druze women in software development and assists them in joining global high-tech companies. The program is carried out in a dedicated center in the northern town of Isfiya, enabling the women to work remotely. The first 14 graduates of this program have been recruited and are currently working in leading companies such as Amdocs, Broadcom and Orbit.
She said, “I am proud of what I represent and I am even more proud of the women who believed in a small dream three years ago, despite the difficulty we religious Druze women face, and believed that the impossible can be possible.”
Shirin Natour-Hafi is the Principal of the first Arab public high school in the city of Lod. The school is located in the “Railway” neighborhood, known for its low socio-economic profile and high crime rates. When she entered her position in 2009, the school had 150 students, and today there are 7,711 students enrolled in grades 7-12. In 2013, Shirin was chosen as a member of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders, a selective cohort of young professionals from all over the world. In 2020, she received an honorary PhD in philosophy from the prestigious Weizmann Institute.
She said, “In this country I have always been exceptional and the message at home was that I am special and not exceptional. I think that if we raise children to feel special and not exceptional, combined with people who will open doors for us, the sky is the limit.”
Yuvi Tashome-Katz is an Ethiopian-Israeli entrepreneur and social activist, with extensive experience in training and community work. She worked as an instructor at the Mandel Institute for Leadership and also worked with the Green Network, an organization that strives for environmental and social change. In 2005, she co-founded the Friends in Nature Association, which aims to form tight-knit communities of young adults, led by successful Israelis of Ethiopian descent, serving as role models to their peers. In light of her activism, in 2011, Yuvi was selected to light a torch in Israel’s Independence Day state ceremony on Mount Herzl. In the same year she also received the Prime Minister’s Award for Entrepreneurship and Nonprofit Innovation. She said, “When I think of innovation and initiative, I think of how all the women in the villages in Ethiopia were entrepreneurs. They all knew how to do a lot of things. From a place of difficulty, they brought wisdom and created opportunities.”
Hana Rado is a leading businesswoman and social entrepreneur. In 2012 she founded “McCann Valley”, a digital media agency in Mitzpe Ramon with the aim of creating attractive jobs in Israel’s remote periphery. In 2017, Rado led the establishment of “Spring Valley”, a digital solutions hub in northern Israel. She said, “We have excellent professional women who are hidden from view because they live in the geographical periphery. They are part of the future of our country, yet we rarely think of them and that is a loss for us all.”
Ruth Polczak is a high-tech entrepreneur, as well as the founder and CEO of “Fincheck”, a fin-tech company that enables users to make informed decisions about their expenses, loans and finances. She is also the founder and chairwoman of the board of “She Codes”, an Israeli community of over 20,000 female programmers, engineers, and entrepreneurs. The organization has set the goal of integrating as many women as possible in the high-tech industry, ultimately aiming to reach 50% female representation in high-tech within a decade. She said, “Perseverance, faith and community are important. You can do everything if you just believe and persevere. 100 years ago we could not vote but we have come a long way. You can look to the future and be optimistic.”
Professor Shulamit Levenberg
Professor Shulamit Levenberg is an Israeli scientist and Dean of the Technion’s Faculty of Biomedical Engineering. She is the head of the university’s stem cell and tissue engineering lab as well as a wife and mother of six. Her areas of work include stem cell differentiation toward tissue vascularization, stem cell 3D organization into composite tissues, use of degradable polymers as scaffolding for cell organization, and 3D tissue bioprinting. She developed a groundbreaking network of blood vessels in muscle, heart, pancreas, and spine tissues, which improves tissue function after transplants. The development is expected to allow, for the first time, a paralyzed body to regain the ability to walk. The development also serves as the basis for Aleph Farms, a startup that “grows” steak using cow cells without harming animals or using meat products.
She said, “This is very moving. I would like to mention a saying of Rabbi Kook, which has always accompanied me – ‘Rise up. Rise up, for you have the strength to do so. You have wings of the spirit.’”
Dr. Yael Gold-Zamir is the first Israeli, ultra-Orthodox woman to graduate from medical school and one of the few tech entrepreneurs in her community. She is the founder of “Embryonics,” a startup that harnesses AI technology to improve the chances of success of in vitro fertilization. Her data-driven solution is 20% more accurate in predicting successful fertility treatments (positive prediction), compared to dozens of senior embryologists. At the same time, the company’s model was able to achieve 30% better results in predicting which fetus would not lead to a successful pregnancy (negative prediction). This company revolutionizes fertility treatments, assisting families in both the emotional and financial aspects of these difficult processes. She said, “The message of this ceremony is a message of empowerment and female leadership and it is a great privilege to be a part of this voice and message.” ————— ENDS————
The American National Academy of Engineering (NAE) announced the admission this month of 106 new members and 23 international (non-American) members, including Dr. Yoelle Maarek, a graduate of the Taub Faculty of Computer Science at the Technion, who is now Vice President of Research at Alexa Shopping at Amazon
Dr. Yoelle Maarek
Technion alumnus Dr. Yoelle Maarek grew up in France, and after gaining an engineering degree from the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris, she went on to earn her Ph.D. in computer science from the Technion in Israel. Since then, she has maintained strong connections with the Technion, and today, she is an ACM Fellow, as well as a member of the Technion Board of Governors and management council.
At Amazon, Maarek leads teams across the US, UK, and Israel in advancing voice search, question answering, and conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI). In particular, she focuses on the shopping domain and is investigating new research areas such as computational humor, which she sees as one of the hardest existing AI challenges. Dr. Maarek has regularly served as program committee (PC) chair and senior PC committee member at leading academic research conferences such as SIGIR, The Web Conference, and Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM).
Maarek, who currently lives in Haifa, is being recognized by the NAE for her: “Contributions to online information retrieval and data management, and leadership in applied industrial research.”
“I am honored and humbled to be recognized by the NAE and to join such a prestigious community,” said Maarek. “I look forward to collaborating with other engineers and scientists in order to continue doing what I’ve loved doing throughout my career – leveraging science and technology to facilitate the lives of people across the world and hopefully delight them.”
“The appointment of Dr. Maarek to the NAE shows important international recognition and an outstanding personal achievement,” said Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan. “As a member of the Technion management council and Board of Governors, she contributes a lot of time and energy to the Faculty of Computer Science and to the Technion and is an important ambassador in strengthening ties between academia and hi-tech industry in Israel and worldwide. As one of the leading Israeli women in the hi-tech world, she encourages male and female students to commit themselves to study and to gain advanced degrees that will give them added value in the industry. Dr. Maarek is an example and a source of inspiration to young female students who take an interest in science and technology, and with her words and deeds, she proves there is no ceiling they cannot break. We congratulate Dr. Maarek and are blessed by her accomplishments.”
The 2020 Eric and Sheila Samson Prime Minister’s Prize for Global Innovation in Smart Mobility and Alternative Fuels for Transportation will be awarded to eight researchers, three of whom are Technion faculty members: Prof. Avner Rothschild, Prof. Gideon (Gidi) Grader and Dr. Yaniv Romano.
Prof. Gideon (Gidi) Grader (l), Prof. Avner Rothschild, and Dr. Yaniv Romano (r).
The one-million-dollar prize is the world’s biggest award in the fields of smart mobility and alternative fuels for transportation. The prize is awarded annually by the Smart Mobility Administration in the Prime Minister’s Office in Israel, in conjunction with the Ministry of Science, Technology and Space and the Keren Hayesod – UIA (United Israel Appeal).
In 2020, the prize was awarded in two categories. The prize for groundbreaking research for achievements in smart mobility and alternative fuels was awarded to Prof. Grader of the Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Prof. Rothschild of the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering. The prize for leading international researchers of smart mobility and alternative fuels who have joined higher education institutes in Israel as full-time faculty members was awarded to Dr. Romano.
Prof. Rothschild and Prof. Grader, members of the Nancy and Stephen Grand Technion Energy Program, were awarded the prize for their contribution to the development of innovative technology that revolutionizes the production of green energy, which is expected in the next few years to yield hydrogen at a competitive cost to fossil fuels, with zero greenhouse gas emissions.
Green hydrogen is a promising alternative fuel, and its use will lower emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases from different sources – traffic, the production of materials and chemicals, and the generation of heating and electricity. To develop the technology, the scientists founded the startup H2PRO, which was granted an exclusive license for the technology’s commercialization by T3, the Technion’s technology transfer unit.
“This is a great honor for our researchers and for the Technion”, said Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan. “Energy is one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century, and I am delighted that the Technion is a leader in the field and a key player in the research and development of innovative technologies that are more environmentally-friendly, for the benefit of mankind.
“Prof. Gidi Grader of the Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Prof. Avner Rothschild of the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering at the Technion are leading researchers in the field and among the founders of the Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP). They leverage different fields of knowledge to develop new, renewable alternative energy sources by integrating different research disciplines, and their scientific breakthrough has applications that will affect the future of us all.”
Dr. Yaniv Romano, who won the prize for young faculty members, completed all his degrees at the Technion. This year, he returned to the Technion as a member of the academic staff after completing a postdoctoral appointment at Stanford University. He is awarded the prize for his groundbreaking contributions in the fields of data science, machine learning and signal processing. His prominent contributions include innovative methods for ensuring the reliability of advanced learning systems, an extensive theory that explains key aspects of deep learning, and the development of technologies that have led to a significant change in the ability to restore visual data from poor quality images. Dr. Romano is a senior lecturer and a member of two Technion faculties – the Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering and the Taub Faculty of Computer Science. His research focuses on the development of advanced data analysis methods, which, in practice and in theory, aims at certifying the validity of the conclusions obtained by machine learning algorithms in terms of reproducibility, accuracy, robustness, and fairness.
“Dr. Yaniv Romano is a young, promising researcher who completed all his academic degrees at the Technion, and happily, he recently returned to us – this time, as a faculty member,” said Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan. “Dr. Romano is an expert on data science and machine learning, spheres in which our research is developing continuously and which have significant potential for the advancement of smart mobility.”
“The three prize winners represent the growing recognition that interdisciplinary research that runs across faculty, disciplinary, institutional and national boundaries is an essential condition for breakthroughs in basic science and its technological applications,” added Prof. Sivan. “Avner, Gidi and Yaniv – your achievements are a blessing to us all.”
EuroTech is a strategic alliance between 6 European Universities of Science and Technology. As part of our general mission, EuroTech has formed a Covid-19 task force to utilize research and technology in the fight against the pandemic. The aim of this workshop is to inform on ongoing related projects in each University, to make knowledge and tools available for others and to form collaborations between involved scientists.
Scientific Plan (note: CET time zone)
14:00 – 14:20
Yotam Bar-On – Israel Institute of Technology (Technion)
Isolation and characterization of rare SARS-CoV-2 variants by single-genome sequencing
14:20 – 14:45
Bert Blocken – Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e)
COVID-19 aerosol reduction by ventilation and air cleaning in a gym
14:45 – 15:10
Jean-Louis Mergny – École Polytechnique (L’X)
SARS-CoV-2 Nsp3 Unique Domain SUD interacts with Guanine quadruplexes
15:10 – 15:35
Arsen Melikov – Technical University of Denmark (DTU)
Effective reduction of airborne transmission of COVID-19 indoors
15:35 – 16:00
David Atienza – École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
The COUGHVID project: Is COVID-19 screening possible from cough sound?
Technion researchers have discovered how a gut microbiota deals with changes in habitat through reversible genetic inversion
How does our gut respond and adapt to changing conditions? Where does this fundamental and critical flexibility come from? Technion scientists are unraveling the genius of the gut’s microbiome, through microbiota, all the way to genetic inversion.
Assistant Professor Naama Geva-Zatorsky and doctoral student Nadav Ben-Assa of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, in collaboration with scientists from Harvard University, have decoded a reversible genetic inversion mechanism that helps a bacterial species of the gut microbiota deal with changes in its habitat. Their findings are published in Nucleic Acids Research, a peer-reviewed scientific journal of Oxford University Press.
Assistant Professor Naama Geva-Zatorsky (left) and doctoral student Nadav Ben-Assa
The human microbiota refers to the collection of microbes (bacteria, viruses, etc. ) that colonize the inner and outer surfaces of the human body. The human intestine contains the most abundant and diverse microbiota population.
Gut microbiota provide a fundamental coping mechanism within the dynamic environment of the gut, in which structural, mechanical, and chemical change occurs incessantly. One mechanism that helps the gut microbiota perform involves rapid, reversible changes in genomes in response to external stimuli.
The article published in Nucleic Acids Research discusses this mechanism in one of the most abundant bacterial species in the human gut, Bacteroides fragilis. This bacterium is capable of inverting a large number of defined regions throughout its genome sequence. The researchers focused on the relationship between this capability and the organism’s gene expression.
The research team examined the gene expressions of these changes (recombination) and found extensive alterations in the bacterial genome.
In the diagram: The bacterium alters its defense system (the weapon), causing a change in the surrounding sugars (the hexagons on the bacterium)
“Among other things, we discovered changes in the sugars surrounding the bacterium,” said Prof. Geva-Zatorsky. “These sugars serve as a kind of ‘identity card’ that helps the bacterium communicate with the environment. With these sugars, they also help our bodies, or more precisely, our immune system, to identify the type of bacterium present, and to respond to it. This is why we assume that changes in the gut alter that ‘identity card,’ which enables our cells to respond to the bacterium in different ways.”
The researchers emphasized that these are reversible genetic inversions, based on recombination of regions in the genome in a major system in the B. fragilis organism. Consequently, this recombination has an extensive effect on the organism’s gene expression, including various vital molecules.
Genetic analysis was performed using SMRT (single molecule real-time) sequencing – an innovative technology from Pacific Biosciences (PacBio) developed in the past decade. The technology enables the long-range sequencing and mapping of DNA molecules, as well as the detection of epigenetic DNA modifications. In the system that was researched, genetic recombination affected genetic modifications and consequently the gene expression of B. fragilis in its entirety. The system can also detect hostile elements such as bacteriophages, and this is the subject of a new research study that is now underway in the laboratory.
The study was supported by the Technion President’s Fund, the Alon Fellowships, The Israel Science Foundation, the Applebaum Family Foundation, the Gutwirth Fellowships, and Human Frontiers.
Click here for the article in Nucleic Acids Research.
Stephen Hawking predicted that a black hole – a celestial object with such strong gravity that nothing can escape its grip – radiates like an ordinary warm object (a “black body,” which emits constant radiation that depends solely on its temperature), like a star. As such, not only should black holes emit radiation, but this “Hawking radiation” from a black hole should be constant over time, like the radiation from a black body. The temperature of the Hawking radiation is determined by the surface gravity. The stronger the force of gravity on the surface of the black hole, the higher the temperature. Though Hawking’s prediction is almost 50 years old, it has not yet been measured in real (celestial) black holes due to the very low Hawking radiation temperature expected, at the nano Kelvin scale or lower.
The group led by Professor Jeff Steinhauer of the Technion Physics Department created a sonic black hole – a system from which sound waves cannot escape, in analogy with real black holes from which not even light can escape beyond a spherical surface termed the event horizon. In a January 4, 2021 paper in Nature Physics, the group showed that stationary Hawking radiation is indeed emitted from a sonic black hole. They measured 97,000 repetitions of the experiment, corresponding to 124 days of continuous measurement, and observed spontaneous Hawking radiation at six different times after the formation of the sonic black hole, and verified that the temperature and strength of the radiation remained constant.
Furthermore, they followed the evolution of Hawking radiation throughout the life of the sonic black hole, and compared and contrasted it with predictions for real black holes. As expected, they first observed the ramp-up of Hawking radiation, which was similar to the ramp-up expected during the formation of a real black hole, followed by the predicted stationary spontaneous emission.
The end of the constant Hawking radiation in the sonic black hole was marked by the formation of an inner horizon, a spherical surface within the sonic black hole, inside of which the sound waves are no longer trapped. This inner horizon radiated outwards and stimulated additional Hawking radiation, resulting in rapid growth of the Hawking radiation beyond the spontaneous emission.
“The experimental results of Professor Steinhauer are of great importance and interest,” said Professor Amos Ori, also of the Technion Physics Department and an expert in the field of general relativity and black holes. “Jeff measures stationary Hawking radiation emitted from a sonic black hole, in agreement with Hawking’s theoretical prediction. This gives very significant experimental support to Hawking’s analysis, which gets experimental approval for the first time in Jeff’s experiments.”
“At the same time,” added Prof. Ori, “the present experiment also showed that after a certain period, the radiation emitted from the system begins to intensify significantly, probably due to the development of stimulated radiation following the formation of the inner horizon. This is a phenomenon that is no longer included in Hawking’s analysis, so it is much more interesting to me. The phenomena observed in this experiment immediately raise the following question: Can real black holes also emit strong stimulated radiation, as Jeff’s sonic black hole did in the experiment? To me, this is a fascinating question and is of critical importance to the physics of black holes as well as astrophysics and cosmology.”
These ground-breaking measurements give the scientific community valuable insights regarding the nature of black holes, sonic and celestial. “Our new long-term goal”, concluded Prof. Steinhauer, “is to see what happens when one goes beyond the approximations used by Hawking, in which the Hawking radiation is quantum, but spacetime is classical. In other words, we would take into account that the analogue black hole is composed of pointlike atoms.”
Six Decades-old Protein-Synthesis Problem Solved at the Technion: After six decades of international effort, Prof. Ashraf Brik’s group at Technion Israel achieves the ultrafast synthesis of a family of peptides and proteins, with huge medical implications
Closing three different rings with selective and fast disulfide bonds formation employing; UV-light, Palladium and Disulfiram
Researchers led by Professor Ashraf Brik of the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry have made an important series of breakthroughs in the synthesis of proteins, which has huge medical implications. The breakthroughs have garnered much attention from the scientific community, and in the span of one week, the group has had five articles accepted for publication in leading scientific journals. All of the publications deal with a novel method of protein synthesis and its implementation in the development of pharmacologically important molecules.
“We anticipate the new synthesis strategies will be a gamechanger in developing new drugs for cancer, intestinal diseases, diabetes, and more,” stated Prof. Brik. Using this novel methodology, his laboratory synthesized plectasin, a peptide that has shown promising antibiotic results against multiresistant bacteria, and linaclotide, a drug used to treat irritable bowel syndrome.
A protein is a chain of amino acids, folded on itself. Forging the chain is a challenge that has already been overcome, but getting it to fold in just the right way has been an ongoing challenge for decades. One element of this challenge is a particular amino acid, cysteine, which forms a disulphide bond with another cysteine along the chain. If there is only one other cysteine on the chain, the bond will be formed, and the protein will fold the way it should. But what if there are more than two cysteines? How can each cysteine be persuaded to attach to the right one, and not to another?
(l-r) Professor Ashraf Brik, Dr. Hao Sun, Ph.D. student Shay Laps, M.Sc. student Fatima Atamleh, laboratory manager Dr. Guy Kamnesky
Until now, scientists had little choice but to allow the proteins to fold, however which way, and filter out the correctly folded ones. Improvements on this basic approach were protein-specific and involved multiple intermediate steps. The process took several hours, or even days, and led to significant loss of material. Prof. Brik’s group was finally able to change that. They were able to find two molecular “cages” that could protect each individual pair of cysteines. One “cage” is unlocked by palladium, and the other by exposure to UV light. When they are unlocked in sequence, only two cysteines are exposed simultaneously, thus only the correct disulphide bond can be formed. Using this method, the team was able to synthesize correctly folded peptides and proteins with up to three disulphide bonds in less than 15 minutes, in one container, and without much material loss.
The researchers who took part in the study were Ph.D. student Shay Laps; M.Sc. student Fatima Atamleh; laboratory manager Dr. Guy Kamnesky; Dr. Hao Sun, who was at the time a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory and is now a professor at the Nanjing Agriculture University; and primary investigator Prof. Ashraf Brik, who holds the Jordan and Irene Tark Academic Chair at the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry at Technion. He has received multiple awards, the latest of which is the Israel Chemical Society Prize of Excellence in 2019. This study is supported by the European Research Council (ERC) advanced grant.
The COVID-19 pandemic may have created many obstacles, but it also provided opportunities for finding creative ways to overcome them. On January 14th, joint teams of students from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and Cornell Tech took part in the final event of a semester-long ideation course, where they presented technological solutions for health challenges.
The course represented the first virtual version of the iTrek program, a yearly effort of the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech that brings New York City-based master’s degree students to Israel to collaborate with Technion students and faculty. While COVID may have kept the Cornell Tech students at home, it did not stop them from visiting Israel virtually and working closely with colleagues in Haifa.
Defi: the winning concept
This year’s iTrek was organized and executed under the leadership of the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute, by Co-Directors Michael Escosia, Assistant Director of Operations, and Lucie Milanez, the Project Manager and Program Coordinator at Technion, and the MindState Ideation Lab. Co-founded by Tamar Many (Shenkar College, Tel Aviv University) and Henk van Assen (Yale, Parsons School of Design), MindState explores societal challenges through an interdisciplinary, human-centric methodology to achieve innovative change. The main event, titled Time to Care, was a joint project of MindState Ideation Lab, the Technion, and Cornell Tech, with help and cooperation from the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center.
Academic leadership of the program was provided by Assistant Professor Joachim Behar, Director of the Technion Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Laboratory (AIMLab), Professor Ron Brachman, Director of the Jacobs Institute, and Professor Ariel Orda, the Jacobs Program Head at the Technion. Teaching assistance was provided by Sofia Segal of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering at Technion.
Twelve multi-disciplinary teams mixed with Technion and Cornell Tech students and professional designers from companies such as Wix, Lightricks, Google, Climacell, and Similar Web took part in the competition through the virtual spaces of Zoom and GatherTown. They, along with mentors from Sourasky Medical Center, tackled problems as varied as communication between patients and staff, challenges of a nurse’s daily routine, early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, and even reducing food waste in hospitals.
The winner Defi aims to develop a portable defibrillator, which runs on a mobile phone’s power supply. They based their project off the fact that access and timely application of a defibrillator can save the life of a person suffering from a heart attack. The team of Ravit Abel (Nanoscience and Nanotechnology M.Sc. Candidate), Alon Gilad (Biomedical Engineering M.Eng. candidate) and Idan Shenfeld (B.Sc. in Computer Engineering, Rothschild program) from the Technion, together with Ashley Dai (Operations Research M.Eng. candidate) and Eric Chan (Double M.Sc. candidate in Applied Information Science and Information Systems) from Cornell Tech proposed a conceptual solution which would eliminate the large battery that constitutes most of the existing defibrillator’s bulk and charge it instead within seconds from any mobile phone. An accompanying app would provide instructions, automatically contact emergency services, and provide caregivers real-time information about the patient’s status. If the groups’ conceptual design would prove feasible, the defibrillator could become compact, cheap, and easy to use.
Second prize went to Minder, aimed at helping the elderly population keep track of medication and stay in touch with physicians as part of their daily routine. Third prize winner, Libi, targets patients recovering post-heart-attack by helping reduce a second incident of cardiac arrest through tracking and education.
By bringing together academics and industry leaders and mixing skills, the Ideation Competition was viewed as “an amazing experience.” Following their victory, Defi team members attributed their success to: “Opportunities to work with top professionals in the field, and to learn about the business side of creating a technological solution concept.” They added that “between us, we all come from different fields; we were able to put together our strengths, come up with different ideas, and achieve together what none of us could have achieved alone.”
Innovation, design thinking, and social impact have always been the driving force of the Jacobs iTrek program. Professor Ronni Gamzu, CEO of Sourasky Medical Center and one of the judges of the competition, concluded the final event by encouraging the teams to “keep on innovating because this is the way to advance medicine, even in the time of an epidemic and pandemic.”
The participating students are either in advanced years of their bachelor’s degrees, or in their graduate degrees. Defi was mentored by Professor Yaron Arbel, director of the Cardiovascular Research Centre at Sourasky Medical Center, and Mr. Eyal Kellner, CIO at the Sourasky Medical Center. The design team assisting them included Elad Rahmin, Oren Elbaz, and Vera Mordehayev from Climacell.
The activity was sponsored by Monday, IMed Medical Habitat, the Technion, the Jacobs Institute at Cornell Tech and the Israel Council for Higher Education. Prize awards in the total amount of $10,000 were provided by the Dr. Joseph Holt and Halaine Maccabee Rose Fund.
The proof-of-concept incorporates real muscle, fat, and vascular-like system similar to a ribeye from a slaughtered cow, in strategy to build a diverse portfolio of cultivated meat cuts of any dimension.
Prof. Shulamit Levenberg with Didier Toubia (right) and graduate student Iris Ianovici (left)
Aleph Farms Ltd. and its research partner at the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, have successfully cultivated the world’s first slaughter-free ribeye steak, using three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting technology and natural building blocks of meat – real cow cells, without genetic engineering and immortalization. With this proprietary technology developed just two short years after it unveiled the world’s first cultivated thin-cut steak in 2018 which did not utilize 3D bioprinting, the Company now has the ability to produce any type of steak and plans to expand its portfolio of quality meat products.
Unlike 3D printing technology, Aleph Farms’ 3D bioprinting technology is the printing of actual living cells that are then incubated to grow, differentiate, and interact, in order to acquire the texture and qualities of a real steak. A proprietary system, similar to the vascularization that occurs naturally in tissues, enables the perfusion of nutrients across the thicker tissue and grants the steak with the similar shape and structure of its native form as found in livestock before and during cooking.
“This breakthrough reflects an artistic expression of the scientific expertise of our team,” enthuses Didier Toubia, Co-Founder and CEO of Aleph Farms. “I am blessed to work with some of the greatest people in this industry. We recognize some consumers will crave thicker and fattier cuts of meat. This accomplishment represents our commitment to meeting our consumer’s unique preferences and taste buds, and we will continue to progressively diversify our offerings,” adds Toubia. “Additional meat designs will drive a larger impact in the mid and long term. This milestone for me marks a major leap in fulfilling our vision of leading a global food system transition toward a more sustainable, equitable and secure world.”
The cultivated ribeye steak is a thicker cut than the company’s first product – a thin-cut steak. It incorporates muscle and fat similar to its slaughtered counterpart and boasts the same organoleptic attributes of a delicious tender, juicy ribeye steak you’d buy from the butcher. “With the realization of this milestone, we have broken the barriers to introducing new levels of variety into the cultivated meat cuts we can now produce. As we look into the future of 3D bioprinting, the opportunities are endless,” says Technion Professor Shulamit Levenberg, Aleph’s Co-Founder, Chief Scientific Advisor and a major brainpower behind the company’s IP. Levenberg is considered a global leader in tissue engineering and has amassed over two decades of research in the field at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in the United States and at the Technion, in Israel. Levenberg is also the former Dean of the Biomedical Engineering Faculty at the Technion.
Aleph Farms’ zealous plans to diversify its offering align with its mission to create a global platform for local production, leveraging a highly scalable technology to create culinary experiences that can be adapted for the different food cultures around the world.
About Aleph Farms
Aleph Farms is a food company that is paving a new way forward as a leader of the global sustainable food ecosystem, working passionately to grow delicious beef steaks from non-genetically engineered cells, isolated from a cow, using a fraction of the resources required for raising an entire animal for meat, without antibiotics and without the use of Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS). Aleph Farms was co-founded with The Kitchen Hub of the Strauss Group and with Professor Shulamit Levenberg, former Dean of the Biomedical Engineering faculty of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Aleph Farms is backed by some of the world’s most innovative food producers, such as Cargill, Migros, and the Strauss Group.
The company has recently received top accolades for its contribution to the global sustainability movement from the World Economic Forum, UNESCO, Netexplo Forum, FAO, and EIT Food.
Using AI and computer automation, Technion researchers have developed a “conjecture generator” that creates mathematical conjectures, which are considered to be the starting point for developing mathematical theorems. They have already used it to generate a number of previously unknown formulas. The study, which was published in the journal Nature, was carried out by undergraduates from different faculties under the tutelage of Assistant Professor Ido Kaminer of the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Technion.
The Research Group L-R: Rotem Elimelech, Yoav Harris, Prof. Ido Kaminer and Shahar
The project deals with one of the most fundamental elements of mathematics – mathematical constants. A mathematical constant is a number with a fixed value that emerges naturally from different mathematical calculations and mathematical structures in different fields. Many mathematical constants are of great importance in mathematics, but also in disciplines that are external to mathematics, including biology, physics, and ecology. The golden ratio and Euler’s number are examples of such fundamental constants. Perhaps the most famous constant is pi, which was studied in ancient times in the context of the circumference of a circle. Today, pi appears in numerous formulas in all branches of science, with many math aficionados competing over who can recall more digits after the decimal point: 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679821480865132823066470938446095505822317253594081284811174502841027019385211055596446229489549303820…
Yahel Manor
The Technion researchers proposed and examined a new idea: The use of computer algorithms to automatically generate mathematical conjectures that appear in the form offormulas for mathematical constants.
A conjecture is a mathematical conclusion or proposition that has not been proved; once the conjecture is proved, it becomes a theorem. Discovery of a mathematical conjecture on fundamental constants is relatively rare, and its source often lies in mathematical genius and exceptional human intuition. Newton, Riemann, Goldbach, Gauss, Euler, and Ramanujan are examples of such genius, and the new approach presented in the paper is named after Srinivasa Ramanujan.
Ramanujan, an Indian mathematician born in 1887, grew up in a poor family, yet managed to arrive in Cambridge at the age of 26 at the initiative of British mathematicians Godfrey Hardy and John Littlewood. Within a few years, he fell ill and returned to India, where he died at the age of 32. During his brief life, he accomplished great achievements in the world of mathematics. One of Ramanujan’s rare capabilities was the intuitive formulation of unproven mathematical formulas. The Technion research team, therefore, decided to name their algorithm “the Ramanujan Machine,” as it generates conjectures without proving them, by “imitating” intuition using AI and considerable computer automation.
Gal Raayoni
According to Prof. Kaminer, “Our results are impressive because the computer doesn’t care if proving the formula is easy or difficult, and doesn’t base the new results on any prior mathematical knowledge, but only on the numbers in mathematical constants. To a large degree, our algorithms work in the same way as Ramanujan himself, who presented results without proof. It’s important to point out that the algorithm itself is incapable of proving the conjectures it found – at this point, the task is left to be resolved by human mathematicians.”
The conjectures generated by the Technion’s Ramanujan Machine have delivered new formulas for well-known mathematical constants such as pi, Euler’s number (e), Apéry’s constant (which is related to the Riemann zeta function), and the Catalan constant. Surprisingly, the algorithms developed by the Technion researchers succeeded not only in creating known formulas for these famous constants, but in discovering several conjectures that were heretofore unknown. The researchers estimate this algorithm will be able to significantly expedite the generation of mathematical conjectures on fundamental constants and help to identify new relationships between these constants.
Yaron Hadad
As mentioned, until now, these conjectures were based on rare genius. This is why in hundreds of years of research, only a few dozens of formulas were found. It took the Technion’s Ramanujan Machine just a few hours to discover all the formulas for pi discovered by Gauss, the “Prince of Mathematics,” during a lifetime of work, along with dozens of new formulas that were unknown to Gauss.
According to the researchers, “Similar ideas can in the future lead to the development of mathematical conjectures in all areas of mathematics, and in this way provide a meaningful tool for mathematical research.”
The research team has launched a website, RamanujanMachine.com, which is intended to inspire the public to be more involved in the advancement of mathematical research by providing algorithmic tools that will be available to mathematicians and the public at large. Even before the article was published, hundreds of students, experts, and amateur mathematicians had signed up to the website.
George Pisha
The research study started out as an undergraduate project in the Rothschild Scholars Technion Program for Excellence with the participation of Gal Raayoni and George Pisha, and continued as part of the research projects conducted in the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering with the participation of Shahar Gottlieb, Yoav Harris, and Doron Haviv. This is also where the most significant breakthrough was made – by an algorithm developed by Shahar Gottlieb – which led to the article’s publication in Nature. Prof. Kaminer adds that the most interesting mathematical discovery made by the Ramanujan Machine’s algorithms to date relates to a new algebraic structure concealed within a Catalan constant. The structure was discovered by high school student Yahel Manor, who participated in the project as part of the Alpha Program for science-oriented youth. Prof. Kaminer added that, “Industry colleagues Uri Mendlovic and Yaron Hadad also participated in the study, and contributed greatly to the mathematical and algorithmic concepts that form the foundation for the Ramanujan Machine. It is important to emphasize that the entire project was executed on a voluntary basis, received no funding, and participants joined the team out of pure scientific curiosity.”
Doron Haviv
Prof. Ido Kaminer is the head of the Robert and Ruth Magid Electron Beam Quantum Dynamics Laboratory. He is a faculty member in the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering and the Solid State Institute. Kaminer is affiliated with the Helen Diller Quantum Center and the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute.
