This Friday 25 April 2009 at 14:00, we will host Dr. Shai Kaplan (Weizmann Institute, Israel) who will share with us his work on:
Diverse input-functions control bacterial genes

Abstract
Cells respond to environmental signals by adjusting the expression level of their genes. The relation between the level of the input signals and the transcription rate of the gene is called the gene input-function. The input-functions of most genes are currently unknown. Here, we use robotic assay of measurements in living cells to map the input-functions of about 20 E. coli sugar genes at high resolution and accuracy. We find diverse, intricately shaped input-functions, including non-monotonic functions that peak at intermediate signal levels. We find that most of the input-functions show separation of variables, in the sense that they can be described as the product of simple functions that depend only on a single input. This study provides the first broad survey of gene input-functions and can be extended to map the logic of gene regulation in other systems and organisms.

This reflects Shai's PhD work in the labs of Uri Alon and Ehud Shapiro.
You may want to look at some of his PhD papers (below)
Hope you'll all join us for this exciting talk!

The incoherent feed-forward loop can generate non-monotonic input functions for genes.
Kaplan S, Bren A, Dekel E, Alon U.
Mol Syst Biol. 2008;4:203. Epub 2008 Jul 15.
Diverse two-dimensional input functions control bacterial sugar genes.
Kaplan S, Bren A, Zaslaver A, Dekel E, Alon U.
Mol Cell. 2008 Mar 28;29(6):786-92.
De novo DNA synthesis using single molecule PCR.
Ben Yehezkel T, Linshiz G, Buaron H, Kaplan S, Shabi U, Shapiro E.
Nucleic Acids Res. 2008 Oct;36(17):e107. Epub 2008 Jul 30.
Recursive construction of perfect DNA molecules from imperfect oligonucleotides.
Linshiz G, Yehezkel TB, Kaplan S, Gronau I, Ravid S, Adar R, Shapiro E.
Mol Syst Biol. 2008;4:191. Epub 2008 May 6.
PMID: 18463615 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
A universal mechanism ties genotype to phenotype in trinucleotide diseases.
Kaplan S, Itzkovitz S, Shapiro E.
PLoS Comput Biol. 2007 Nov;3(11):e235. Epub 2007 Oct 16.