Daniel Benhalevy, PhD

Lab Head

Daniel Benhalevy, Tel Aviv University

Pronouns: he/him

Biography
I was trained as an undergrad at the Faculty of Life Sciences in Tel-Aviv University, and obtained my MSc and PhD degrees at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Then, I completed postdoctoral studies at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda Maryland, where I still remain as guest researcher in the lab of Markus Hafner at NIAMS. On October 2022 I was appointed as senior lecturer at the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Shmunis School of Biomedical and Cancer Research, Tel Aviv University. We are recruiting...

Research
Bigger picture:
All the cells in our body have the same DNA, the same genes, and yet they are very different from each other. These differences rise from how each cell expresses its genes. Therefore, to understand how cells function and fail it is crucial to understand how gene expression is regulated and executed.
Questions we study aim to understand how regulation of gene expression is changing in disease, and to find ways we could modulate gene expression to alleviate disease.

We study post-transcriptional gene regulation.
Basic concepts are established regarding how RNA production based on DNA code is regulated (transcriptional gene regulation). But genes are also heavily regulated at multiple steps after transcription such as RNA processing, nuclear export, translation, and RNA degradation (post-transcriptional gene regulation), where basic principles are not well understood. Our lab is interested in how RNA Binding Proteins and non-coding RNAs orchestrate post-transcriptional gene regulation.

Zooming in to subcellular resolution.
The same RNA Binding Protein may act at distinct cellular locations to regulate different steps along the mRNA life cycle. This can happen concurrently at the same time by separate subpopulations of the same RBP, or alternatively RBPs may shuttle between compartments in response to a signal or in disease.
So, to really understand post transcriptional gene regulation we zoom-in on subcellular compartments, capture a specific subpopulation of an RNA Binding protein and its associated RNA and protein counterparts, and aim to study their function in context of their encompassing compartment, whether it be the function it fulfills or the molecular signals within it.

To do this we combine:
• Cell biology and quantitative viewpoints.
• Molecular, biochemical, and genetic tools.
• Advanced transcriptomics (RNA sequencing, ribosome footprinting, PAR-CLIP, Proximity-CLIP).
• Diverse bioinformatic data analyses.