Partner 5

Short name: IIT

Principal Investigator: Dr. Dan Zilberstein, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology

Host Institution, the Technion: In operation since 1924, the Technion is the oldest university in Israel. The university offers degrees in science and engineering, and related fields such as architecture, medicine, industrial management and education in an intellectually invigorating environment. Great emphasis is also placed on its humanities and social science programs, the incorporation of which take on ever-increasing importance in today’s multi-faceted workplace. But Technion’s goals go beyond providing a well-rounded technical education. At the institute, scientific instruction is interwoven with professional ethics, producing leaders sensitive to social and environmental issues. The Technion Faculty of Biology was established in 1971 with three objectives: to undertake high level research, produce a new generation of scientists and provide top notch biology instruction on campus. The Faculty places great emphasis on a diversity of fields, all situated at the forefront of the life sciences today. The Faculty has a facilities center that include state of the art fluorescence microscopes, proteomics center, centrifuges and all that is required to support forefront research.

Dan Zilberstein: Was graduated in microbiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on 1982 under the supervision of Profs. Etana Padan and Shimon Schuldiner. Then, on 1982-1986 he did a post doctorate at the laboratory of parasitic diseases at the National Institutes of Heath in the USA, specializing in the physiology and biochemistry of the parasitic protozoan Leishmania. In 1986 he started his own laboratory as a senior investigator in the Faculty of Biology at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. He was promoted to professor in 1994. His research has been focused on three subjects: a) mechanism of amino acid transport, b) molecular mechanism of Leishmania development inside the host and c) mechanism of drug resistance. His major achievements are: 1) the first to describe the source of energy that drives sugar and amino acid transport 2) was the first to show that pentavalent antimony, the first choice of anti leishmanial drug, is more active against the intracellular form of the parasite. This is achieved by a stage-specific reduction of SbV to SbIII, 3) Leishmania differentiation from the extracellular to the intracellular forms is highly regulated process and 4) was the first to describe time course of differentiation using high throughput technologists. More information can be found at his laboratory web site at

http://biology.technion.ac.il/faculty_websites/zilberstein/index.htm.

Selected publications:

1. Rosenzweig, D., Smith, D., Myler, P.J., Olafson, R.W., and Zilberstein, D. Post-translational modification of cellular proteins during Leishmania donovani differentiation. Proteomics (2008a) 8: 1843-1850.

2. Rosenzweig, D., Smith, D., Opperdoes, F.R., Stern, S., Olafson, R.W., and Zilberstein, D. Retooling Leishmania metabolism: from sandfly gut to human macrophage. FASEB Journal (2008b) 22: 590-602.

3. Zilberstein, D. Perspectives of Leishmania differentiation. In: "Leishmania after the genome: biology and control". Myler, P.J. and Fasel, N. eds. Horizon Scientific Press and Caister Academic Press (2007). In press.

4. Saxena, A., Tamar, L., Holland, N., Aggarwal, G., Anupama, A., Huang, Y., Volpin, H., Myler, P.J. and Zilberstein, D. Analysis of the Leishmania donovani transcriptome reveals an ordered progression of transient and permanent changes in gene expression during differentiation. Mol. Biochem. Parasitol. 152 (2007), 53-65.

5. Shaked-Mishan, P., Suter-Grotemeyer, M., Yoel-Almagor, T., Holland, N., Zilberstein, D. and Rentsch, D. Novel high affinity arginine transporter from the human parasitic protozoan Leishmania donovani. Molecular Microbiology 60 (2006), 30-38.

6. Barak, E., Amin-Spector, S., Gerliak, E., Goyard, S., Holland, N. and Zilberstein, D. Differentiation of Leishmania donovani in host-free system: analysis of signal perception and response. Mol. Biochem. Parasitol., (2005), 141, 99-108.