$$News and Reports$$

Sep. 07, 2017

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BGU's Prof. Raz Zarivach has been awarded a Humboldt Research Fellowship. The Fellowship for experienced researchers will enable him to conduct research with Dr. Damien Faivre (Max-Planck-Institut für Kolloid- und Grenzflächenforschung, Potsdam, Germany) and Prof. Dr. Dirk Schüler (Universität Bayreuth, Germany).

Their topic of research will be the study of protein-mineral interactions in magnetotactic bacteria, a magnetic bacteria that is able to navigate in magnetic fields. “Through this research, we will understand how bacteria become magnetic via the formation of magnetic nanoparticles, all controlled via specific proteins," he explains.

Zarivach is head of the Zarivach Laboratory for Structural Biology, as well as chair of the Macromolecular Crystallography Research Centre ​(MCRC) at BGU. The laboratory focuses on the elucidation of protein's structure and function. To do so, lab members utilize various techniques, ranging from Circular Dichroism to Macromolecullar Crystallography. The research in the lab focuses on two major topics: Magnetosome-related proteins, and effectors of the type III secretion system in pathogenic bacteria.

Zarivach is a member of the Department of Life Sciences in the Faculty of Natural Sciences and a member of the Applied Biotechnology Group​ at the National Institute for Biotechnology in the Negev​ (NIBN) located at BGU. He is a former EMBO Young Investigator. He also participated in the 63rd Annual Lindau Laureate Meeting in Lindau, Germany.

Prior to joining BGU, Zarivach was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia, Canada, on the E. coli Type III secretion system. He did his PhD at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, under the supervision of Prof. Ada Yonath (2009 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry) on the subject of ribosome structures.

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation enables over 2,000 researchers from all over the world to spend time working in Germany every year. The Foundation has a netw​ork of over 28,000 Humboldtians working in all fields and disciplines in over 140 countries – including 54 Nobel laureates.

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