News Releases
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Protecting Our Planet
Rhapsody in Red Violet
Color in the plant kingdom is not merely a joy to the eye. Colored pigments attract pollinating insects, they protect plants against disease, they confer health benefits, and are used in the food and drug industries. A new study conducted at the Weizmann Institute of Science, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, has now opened the way to numerous potential uses of betalains, the highly nutritious red-violet and yellow pigments known for their antioxidant properties and commonly used as food dyes.
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Improving Health & Medicine
First Blood Cells
One of the first organ systems to form and function in the embryo is the cardiovascular system: in fact, this developmental process starts so early that scientists still have many unresolved questions on the origin of the primitive heart and blood vessels. How do the first cells – the progenitors – that are destined to become part of this system participate in shaping the developed cardiovascular system? Dr. Lyad Zamir, a former PhD student in the lab of Prof. Eldad Tzahor in the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Department of Molecular Cell Biology, developed a method to image the earliest cardiovascular progenitors and track them and their descendants through the developing embryo in real time. His movies took place in fertilized chicken eggs, in which a complex network of blood vessels forms within the yolk sac to nourish the embryo. The findings of this research were recently published in eLife.
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Improving Health & Medicine
Cell Economics 101
Every time we swallow food, cells that line the intestines must step up their activity in a sudden and dramatic manner. According to a new study by Weizmann Institute of Science researchers, reported in Science, they rise to the challenge in the most economic fashion. In business or engineering, when one has to get production underway quickly, instant decisions are made. These might involve instantly throwing all one’s resources into boosting production with existing equipment, or else first spending all those resources to equip the plant with proper machinery. The latter might seem to be a less efficient production method but it can actually, in some cases, speed things up considerably. Dr. Shalev Itzkovitz and his team in the Department of Molecular Cell Biology discovered that this is just the method adopted in the lining of the intestinal wall.
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Weizmann Institute of Science is Sixth in the World in the Nature Index of Innovation, and First Outside the U.S.
The Nature Index of Innovation, published August 9, 2017, places the Weizmann Institute of Science in sixth place in an international ranking of the world’s top 200 research institutions. To determine placements, the Nature Index – affiliated with renowned scientific journal Nature – examined how research articles are cited in third-party patents, then ranked the institutions according to the impact produced by their academic research.The rationale for this process is that by looking at patents owned by third parties – informed by and citing academic work – rather than those held by institutions themselves, the influence of research on the development of products and services is exposed. According to Nature, the academic players featured in the index are those “whose ideas may shape tomorrow’s inventions. The top of these tables are occupied by both institutions with global reputations for high-quality research and others whose published work is having a disproportionately high impact relative to their size.”
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Advancing Technology
Microscopic Cocoons Made of Silk Protein May Facilitate Drug Design
Scientists have managed to design microscopic silk capsules that mimic, on a very small scale, the structure of silkworm cocoons. The capsules can serve as a protective environment for the transport of sensitive “cargo” such as natural silk proteins, antibodies, or other delicate molecules. The collaborative research – which was performed by an international team of academics from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel; the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, and Sheffield in the UK; and the ETH in Switzerland – may lead to a host of applications in the cosmetics, food, and pharmaceutical industries, particularly in the delivery of drugs within the body. The findings were reported in Nature Communications.
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Weizmann House Reopens to the Public
A water tank concealed below the eastern patio, cork insulation inside the walls, and a drainage system hidden in the columns of the pool – these are just a few of unique features uncovered as Weizmann House underwent an extensive restoration and conservation process over the past year. The house has now reopened to the public. More than 80 years after it was built, the house of the first president of the State of Israel – designed by Erich Mendelsohn, one of the giants of modern architecture – continues to garner interest around the world. In parallel with its reopening to the public, the international organization Iconic Houses chose to add Weizmann House to its ranks. This makes Weizmann House the first building in Israel to become a part of this network, joining such modern architectural wonders as Fallingwater, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright; Vila Tugentdat of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; and another 150 houses around the world.
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Protecting Our Planet
The Dust Storm Microbiome
Israel is subjected to sand and dust storms from several directions: northeast from the Sahara, northwest from Saudi Arabia, and southwest from the desert regions of Syria. The airborne dust carried in these storms affects the health of people and ecosystems alike. New research at the Weizmann Institute of Science suggests that part of the effect might not be in the particles of dust but rather in bacteria that cling to them, traveling many kilometers in the air with the storms. Some of these bacteria might be pathogenic – harmful to us or the environment – and a few of them also carry genes for antibiotic resistance.
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Exploring the Physical World
Jerusalem Tower Younger than Thought
Gihon Spring, just downhill from the ancient city of Jerusalem, was crucial to the survival of its inhabitants, and archaeologists had uncovered the remains of a massive stone tower built to guard this vital water supply. Based on pottery and other regional findings, the archaeologists had originally assigned it a date of 1,700 BCE. But new research conducted at the Weizmann Institute of Science provides conclusive evidence that the stones at the base of the tower were laid nearly 1,000 years later.
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Exploring the Physical World
Jupiter, Revealed: Israeli Scientists Peer Beneath the Cloud Cover of Our Solar System’s Largest Planet
More than 400 years after Galileo turned his telescope toward the planet Jupiter, the clouds and mist covering this giant of our Solar System are beginning to disperse. Since 1973, no fewer than six spacecraft have flown by Jupiter. But the Juno probe, launched in 2011 and in orbit around the planet since July 2016, is the first one equipped with systems that are able to reveal the secrets of Jupiter’s inner structure beneath the thick clouds.
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Improving Health & Medicine
Bread and Health: A Personal Matter
Bread occupies a unique place in our diet: it accounts for about one-tenth of the calories many people in the West consume and up to 40 percent of the caloric consumption in some non-Western countries – more than any other food product. In the past few decades, since white bread has acquired a bad name, bakeries have been going out of their way to produce high-quality whole grain breads. But a new study conducted at the Weizmann Institute of Science and published recently in Cell Metabolism reveals that these “wholesome” choices are not necessarily the healthiest for everyone.
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Exploring the Physical World
How to Reduce Shockwaves in Quantum Beam Experiments
The tiny cone-shaped “skimmers” used in experiments looking for exotic chemical-quantum phenomena resemble the intake mechanisms of aircraft engines, and they perform similar functions: each directs the flow of gas – the engine intake controls the supply of air for burning fuel, and the “skimmer” creates beams of cold flying atoms or molecules. While skimmers have been a necessary component in atomic and molecular-beam experiments for decades, they were also known to impose a fundamental limit on the number of particles one could pack into the beam.
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Improving Health & Medicine
The Brain’s Rejuvenating Cells
Alzheimer’s disease is a neurodegenerative disease manifested by various neuronal pathological processes and a significant decline in brain function. Aggregates of beta-amyloid protein (“plaques”) accumulate within and between brain cells. Due to both structural changes and the weakening of chemical communication pathways, the junctions of neuronal networks (synapses) are lost. In addition, the cytoskeletal proteins of the axons lose their normal structure, impairing their function and causing massive neuronal death.
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Improving Health & Medicine
Young at Heart: Restoring Cardiac Function with a Matrix Molecule
Heart disease remains the leading cause of death worldwide, yet the few available treatments are still mostly unsuccessful once the heart tissue has suffered damage. Mammalian hearts are actually able to regenerate themselves and repair damage – but only up to around the time of birth. Afterward, that ability disappears, seemingly forever.
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Improving Health & Medicine
Stressed Out from Birth: Mice Exposed to Prenatal Stress Are Predisposed to Eating Disorders Later in Life
Stress affects the body and can trigger illness – from psychiatric disorders to heart disease. Humans are exposed to stress at different intensities throughout life: as children, in adolescence, and in old age. But when is the impact of stress on our systems most powerful? Many researchers maintain that the critical effect occurs prenatally, inside the womb. This hypothesis was, until recently, based mainly on statistical data indicating a correlation between stress during pregnancy and susceptibility to disease.
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Advancing Technology
Self-Organization Makes for Efficient Separation
Prof. Rybtchinski’s self-assembling membrane for water purification
Separation technology is at the heart of water purification, sewage treatment, and materials reclamation, as well as numerous basic industrial processes. Membranes are used to separate out the smallest nanoscale particles, and even molecules and metal ions. Prof. Boris Rybtchinski and his group of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Department of Organic Chemistry have developed a new type of membrane that could extend the life of a separation system, lower its cost and, in some cases, increase its efficiency as well. -
Fighting Cancer
Rare Genetic Defect May Lead to Cancer Drug
The path to understanding what goes wrong in cancer could benefit from a detour through studies of rare childhood diseases. Dr. Ayelet Erez explains that cancer generally involves dozens – if not hundreds – of mutations, and sorting out the various functions and malfunctions of each may be nearly impossible. Rare childhood diseases, in contrast, generally involve mutations to a single gene.