Hanah Margalit

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Hanah Margalit
Margalit-pic-11-18.png
Alma mater Hebrew University of Jerusalem (PhD)
Awards ISCB Fellow (2018) [1]
Landau Prize in Systems Biology (2008)
Rothschild Prize in Computational Biology [2]
Scientific career
Fields Bioinformatics
Computational Biology
Systems Biology [3]
Institutions Hebrew University of Jerusalem
National Institutes of Health
Doctoral advisor Norman Grover
Other academic advisors Charles DeLisi
Website margalit.huji.ac.il

Hanah Margalit is a Professor in the faculty of medicine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. [4] [5] Her research combines bioinformatics, computational biology and systems biology, specifically in the fields of gene regulation in bacteria and eukaryotes. [3]

Contents

Education

Margalit earned her B.Sc degree (in Mathematics and Biology, 1974) and MSc degree (in Genetics, with distinction, 1977) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. [4] In 1985, she completed her PhD in computational molecular biology, under the supervision of Norman Grover, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[ citation needed ]

Career and research

Margalit completed postdoctoral research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the laboratory of mathematical biology under the supervision of Charles DeLisi, where she developed the first computational algorithm to predict antigenic peptides recognized by immune cells. [6] In 1989, she returned to Israel and established her independent research group at the Faculty of Medicine, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Her early research included development of computational algorithms for predicting binding of antigenic peptides to MHC molecules, [7] computational models of protein-DNA binding preferences, [8] [9] also in collaboration with Nir Friedman, [10] identification of domain pairs as the building blocks of protein-protein interaction networks, [11] analysis of the integrated network of protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions [12] (in collaboration with Uri Alon), as well as computational models for predicting small regulatory RNA molecules in bacteria, [13] which were verified experimentally in collaboration with Shoshy Altuvia and Gerhart Wagner.

More recently, Margalit's lab studied the dynamics of regulation by small RNAs [14] (in collaboration with Ofer Biham), and computationally predicted that there are viral microRNA molecules that repress the human immune system, a mechanism that was experimentally validated in collaboration with Ofer Mandelboim. [15] Since 2012, Margalit has combined experimental and computational research for studying small RNA-target interactions in bacteria. [16]

Margalit was one of pioneering researchers of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology in Israel and worldwide. At the Hebrew University she co-founded the "Computer Science and Life Sciences" program in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (in 1999) and the graduate "Genomics and Bioinformatics" program (in 2000). In 2002 she was elected as the first president of the Israeli Society of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (2002-2004). Margalit has mentored over 50 graduate students, many of them holding faculty positions in bioinformatics in Israel and abroad. [17]

Awards and honors

In 2008 she was awarded the Michael Landau prize in Systems Biology. [18] In 2018, Margalit was elected a fellow of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) for outstanding contributions to the fields of computational biology and bioinformatics. [1] In 2020, Prof. Margalit was awarded the Rothschild Prize in Computational Biology. [19]

Personal life

Margalit is married to Avi and a mother of three children.[ citation needed ]

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References

  1. 1 2 Anon (2018). "ISCB Fellows". iscb.org. International Society for Computational Biology. Archived from the original on 2015-04-15. Retrieved 2018-03-13.
  2. "The Rothschild Prize". The Rothschild Prize. Retrieved 7 March 2020.
  3. 1 2 Hanah Margalit publications indexed by Google Scholar OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  4. 1 2 "Keynotes Details". www.iscb.org. Retrieved 2018-11-28.
  5. "Hanah Margalit's Lab". margalit.huji.ac.il.
  6. Margalit, H.; Spouge, J. L.; Cornette, J. L.; Cease, K. B.; Delisi, C.; Berzofsky, J. A. (1987). "Prediction of immunodominant helper T cell antigenic sites from the primary sequence". Journal of Immunology. 138 (7): 2213–2229. ISSN   0022-1767. PMID   2435793.
  7. Altuvia, Y.; Schueler, O.; Margalit, H. (1995). "Ranking potential binding peptides to MHC molecules by a computational threading approach". Journal of Molecular Biology. 249 (2): 244–250. doi:10.1006/jmbi.1995.0293. ISSN   0022-2836. PMID   7540211.
  8. Mandel-Gutfreund, Y.; Schueler, O.; Margalit, H. (1995). "Comprehensive analysis of hydrogen bonds in regulatory protein DNA-complexes: in search of common principles". Journal of Molecular Biology. 253 (2): 370–382. doi:10.1006/jmbi.1995.0559. ISSN   0022-2836. PMID   7563096.
  9. Mandel-Gutfreund, Y.; Margalit, H. (1998). "Quantitative parameters for amino acid-base interaction: implications for prediction of protein-DNA binding sites". Nucleic Acids Research. 26 (10): 2306–2312. doi:10.1093/nar/26.10.2306. ISSN   0305-1048. PMC   147552 . PMID   9580679.
  10. Kaplan, Tommy; Friedman, Nir; Margalit, Hanah (2005). "Ab Initio Prediction of Transcription Factor Targets Using Structural Knowledge". PLOS Computational Biology. 1 (1): e1. Bibcode:2005PLSCB...1....1K. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.0010001 . ISSN   1553-734X. PMC   1183507 . PMID   16103898.
  11. Sprinzak, E.; Margalit, H. (2001-08-24). "Correlated sequence-signatures as markers of protein-protein interaction". Journal of Molecular Biology. 311 (4): 681–692. doi:10.1006/jmbi.2001.4920. ISSN   0022-2836. PMID   11518523.
  12. Yeger-Lotem, Esti; Sattath, Shmuel; Kashtan, Nadav; Itzkovitz, Shalev; Milo, Ron; Pinter, Ron Y.; Alon, Uri; Margalit, Hanah (2004). "Network motifs in integrated cellular networks of transcription-regulation and protein-protein interaction". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 101 (16): 5934–5939. Bibcode:2004PNAS..101.5934Y. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0306752101 . ISSN   0027-8424. PMC   395901 . PMID   15079056.
  13. Argaman, L.; Hershberg, R.; Vogel, J.; Bejerano, G.; Wagner, E. G.; Margalit, H.; Altuvia, S. (2001-06-26). "Novel small RNA-encoding genes in the intergenic regions of Escherichia coli". Current Biology. 11 (12): 941–950. doi: 10.1016/s0960-9822(01)00270-6 . ISSN   0960-9822. PMID   11448770.
  14. Shimoni, Yishai; Friedlander, Gilgi; Hetzroni, Guy; Niv, Gali; Altuvia, Shoshy; Biham, Ofer; Margalit, Hanah (2007). "Regulation of gene expression by small non-coding RNAs: a quantitative view". Molecular Systems Biology. 3: 138. doi:10.1038/msb4100181. ISSN   1744-4292. PMC   2013925 . PMID   17893699.
  15. Stern-Ginossar, Noam; Elefant, Naama; Zimmermann, Albert; Wolf, Dana G.; Saleh, Nivin; Biton, Moshe; Horwitz, Elad; Prokocimer, Zafnat; Prichard, Mark; Hahn, Gabriele; Goldman-Wohl, Debra; Hahn, Gabriele; Greenfield, Caryn; Yagel, Simcha; Hengel, Hartmut; Altuvia, Yael; Margalit, Hanah; Mandelboim, Ofer (2007). "Host immune system gene targeting by a viral miRNA". Science. 317 (5836): 376–381. Bibcode:2007Sci...317..376S. doi:10.1126/science.1140956. ISSN   1095-9203. PMC   4283197 . PMID   17641203.
  16. Melamed, Sahar; Peer, Asaf; Faigenbaum-Romm, Raya; Gatt, Yair E.; Reiss, Niv; Bar, Amir; Altuvia, Yael; Argaman, Liron; Margalit, Hanah (2016). "Global Mapping of Small RNA-Target Interactions in Bacteria". Molecular Cell. 63 (5): 884–897. doi:10.1016/j.molcel.2016.07.026. ISSN   1097-4164. PMC   5145812 . PMID   27588604.
  17. "Hanah Margalit's Lab". margalit.huji.ac.il. Retrieved 2018-11-28.
  18. "קרן לנדאו - פרס למדעים ומחקר" (in Hebrew). 2012-06-17. Archived from the original on 2012-06-17. Retrieved 2018-11-28.
  19. "The Rothschild Prize". The Rothschild Prize. Retrieved 7 March 2020.