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]

Hanah Margalit
Alma materHebrew University of Jerusalem (PhD)
AwardsISCB Fellow (2018)[1]
Landau Prize in Systems Biology (2008)
Rothschild Prize in Computational Biology[2]
Scientific career
FieldsBioinformatics
Computational Biology
Systems Biology[3]
InstitutionsHebrew University of Jerusalem
National Institutes of Health
Doctoral advisorNorman Grover
Other academic advisorsCharles DeLisi
Websitemargalit.huji.ac.il

Education

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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

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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

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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

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

References

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  1. ^ a b 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. ^ a b Hanah Margalit publications indexed by Google Scholar  
  4. ^ a b "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.