Shalom! My name is Sabrina Liu, and I am a rising junior from MIT interning at the Mizrahi lab this summer through the MISTI Israel program. Though I am majoring in Biological Engineering, most of the previous research I was involved in at the Koch Institute involved mechanical engineering in relation to biomedical devices. I was excited to not only work in the Mizrahi lab and learn wet lab/analysis techniques directly related to my major, but to meet diverse people and immerse myself in a new … [Read more...]

Hello! My name is Ido, and I’ve been a member of the Mizrahi lab for the past two years. During my undergraduate degree, my involvement in the group began as a lab technician, a year later I become a bachelors project student. Two years have passed and, these days, I am beginning my master degree here in Mizrahi's lab.   At the end of my undergraduate studies, I went through a motivational crisis. Studying for exams semester after semester just for the sake of good grades felt … [Read more...]

  We have just published the 4th paper in our sequel story on Lactobacillus plantarum metabolic engineering! We have termed it "Rapid adaptation for fiber degradation by changes in plasmid stoichiometry within Lactobacillus plantarum at the synthetic community level "as we found that microbes can increase their fiber degradation capability as a community if they are synthetically evolved in the laboratory to do that. This story in fact began in 2011 when I first met Itzik and … [Read more...]

This story begins at a dairy science convention in Jerusalem. When I (Ori Furman) was about to graduate from my Master’s degree, in 2013.  I was interested in pursuing the same course and to continue studying ruminants, a topic that had intrigued me since my high school days in an agricultural school. I specifically was interested in exploring the mechanism that drives the function of the rumen microbiome. I, therefore, decided to attend the Mizrahi group lectures, where I met me Profesor … [Read more...]

Hey there, my name is Johanna, 22 years old, and I am from Germany. I visited Israel and the MizrahiLab in March 2020 for 6 weeks. Or at least I tried to! Because my box of chocolate was not only filled with an awesome country, a new language, many very kind people, new experiences and interesting research, but it was also filled with the problems of the corona virus pandemic. As a German I am used to be on time and like it best when everything goes as planned. But during my stay in Israel … [Read more...]

Greetings from sunny Be’er Shevah. My name is Sam and I am a rising senior studying microbiology at the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. I am on a program called Onward Israel, which provides highly subsidized internships to students from around the world who want to experience working life in Israel. And my name is Leyla I came from Turkey and my major is molecular biology and genetics. My school requires that students do a mandatory internship for 30 days. And I searched … [Read more...]

Global warming increases the strength and frequency El Niño events, affecting marine ecosystems along the equatorial pacific region. One of the best-documented examples of the effect of this extreme climatic event on marine biodiversity is found in the Galapagos Islands. There, the rise in water temperatures forces changes in the diet of marine iguanas that have led to massive populations collapses (80-90% of all individuals). The collapse in iguana populations is caused by the shifts in algal … [Read more...]

So how is it like to be a first-year master student and taking baby steps towards becoming a researcher at the Mizrahi lab? From the moment I stepped into the Mizrahi lab, I knew I have joined a special place.  Where you are encouraged to think, learn, be creative, improvise and take your ideas into the next level. First of all, I got to know the different lab facilities and rooms, the anaerobic lab which enables us to grow anaerobic bacteria and perform studies as well as the storage room … [Read more...]

Have you ever wondered how do we know who are the microbes in environmental samples? Understanding microbial life requires us to study their functionality and metabolism which is also only possible in pure culture. Sadly, with the increasing technological advances, isolating new microbes from the environment was pretty much abandoned, as it is not an easy task.  Cultivating pure microorganisms is essential to form databases to which environmental samples will be compared to, however, some … [Read more...]