Shahar Bracha @shaharbrr Twitter profile

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Shahar Bracha

3 months

My PhD work on harnessing the brain parasite Toxoplasma gondii for protein delivery to the brain is out in @NatureMicrobiol !

Engineering Toxoplasma gondii secretion systems for intracellular delivery of multiple large...

Nature Microbiology - Toxoplasma gondii secretion systems can be engineered to deliver multiple large therapeutic proteins to neurons in vitro and in vivo.

www.nature.com

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

So so so so excited to share this! This preprint summarizes my journey of trying to engineer the brain parasite Toxoplasma gondii to deliver therapeutic proteins into neurons, together with @OdedRechavi and @SheinerLab 1/n #bioRxiv

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

5 years

Thesis submitted! PhD done! Ahhhhh!!!

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

4 years

Excited to share that in June I will be moving to MIT to start my postdoc with @eboyden3 ! Looking forward to work towards turning some scientific dreams into reality. Also - would be happy for any Boston recommendations!

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

Made linoleum prints of all the different model organisms studied in the @OdedRechavi lab over the years

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

7 months

Our ICLR paper describing a new method for ML-guided protein design has been featured on MIT news!

McGovern Institute

@mcgovernmit

7 months

MIT researchers have developed a computational technique that makes it easier to engineer useful proteins - including ones that could be used to measure electrical activity in the brain.

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

This project was a huge part of my life for the past 5 years, and it taught me a lot, about science, about myself, and about what excites me the most in science. Looking forward to hear your thoughts and comments! 14/n

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

4 years

The person who invented "air dry pellet for 5-10 min" is the same one who came up with "fry onions for 5-10 min until brown and caramelized"

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

Focusing on MeCP2, the protein missing in Rett syndrome, we show that our parasites can deliver MeCP2 to neurons, and we can even see it binding DNA in their nucleus the same way normal MeCP2 does! 10/n

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

Only that Toxoplasma is actually 🐁🐑🐫🦒🐘🐇🐿️🐄🐖🦔🦇🐼🐔🐦🐵🦄🦌👫 ----> 😺 ----> 🐑🐫🦒🐘🐇🐿️🐄🐖🦔🦇🐼🐔🐦🐵🦄🦌👫 #ExtremeGeneralist

Biolojical

@biolojical

6 years

Parasite life cycles: Anisakis🦐→🐟→🐬 Schistosoma🐌→👥 Dicrocoelium🐌→🐜→🐄 Trichinella🐀→🐖 Toxoplasma🐀→🐈 Dirofilaria🦟→🐶 Plasmodium👥→🦟 Echinococcus🐑→🐶 Ancylostoma💩→🐶 Balantidium💩→🐖 Cryptosporidium💩→👥 Naegleria♨️→👥 Pediculus🚸🔄🚸 Viscum🌳→💏

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

Thanks to my mentors @OdedRechavi and @SheinerLab , everyone in both labs and especially Karoliina, our collaborator Stuart Cobb and everyone who helped along the way. Living between Tel Aviv and Glasgow wasn't easy, but being surrounded by friends made the whole difference

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

And... It's getting official!

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

3 months

I think there is also an important lesson here on the vast untapped potential that lies in expanding synthetic biology beyond model organisms. Thank you @datreeio for emphasizing my musing about this in his piece

Researchers engineer brain-infecting parasite into living drug delivery system

Toxoplasma gondii is a protozoan parasite famous for its cunning ways. | Toxoplasma gondii is a protozoan parasite famous for its cunning ways. This microbial manipulator can only reproduce inside of...

www.fiercebiotech.com

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

9 months

My primary thesis for bioengineering - yeah what you cannot create you cannot understand, but there is plenty that you can create without first understanding it

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

7 years

Toxoplasma gondii everywhere

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

We noticed that these special skills of Toxoplasma answer the exact problems that hinder the delivery of macromolecules to the brain. We therefore wondered if these mechanisms can be harnessed for the delivery of therapeutic protein to the CNS. 7/n

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

5 years

In 24 hours my consciousness will finish uploading to the server and then there is nothing that can stop me (just kidding I'm at the sleep clinic)

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

5 years

THIS IS NOT WHAT I MEANT

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

Going to miss this lab so much! It feels weird to see the end of something that has been such a huge part of my life

Oded Rechavi

@OdedRechavi

6 years

Goodbye picnic to @shaharbrr . We planted some parasites in your brain so you’ll always remember us. 😷

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

3 months

We take an alternative approach to brain delivery - instead of engineering a synthetic solution from scratch, we figured out how to harness a parasite that naturally evolved to do exactly that

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

You probably heard of Toxoplasma because of the way it cycles between cats and their prey. However, Toxoplasma also infects people. 2/n

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

So we tested different secretion systems and different protein configurations until finally we found some that were secreted. Through these attempts, we also managed to show some cool things about the mechanism by which Toxoplasma secrets proteins to the host. 9/n

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

3 months

@datreeio @eboyden3 Huge thanks to @OdedRechavi and @SheinerLab who supported me all along in this crazy project, and all the collaborators that contributed to this work @AdrianoAguzzi , @gtesta72 ,Anita Koshy's lab, @NicoloCaporale @PhDanW

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

But we believe that by harnessing what was developed and perfected by this parasite for its own needs, we can provide a new method for delivery of therapeutics to the brain, which overcomes many of the hard challenges faced by current ‘man-made’ drug delivery systems. 13/n

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

Toxoplasmosis can be dangerous in people with weakened immune systems, but in most people infections are asymptomatic, and aren’t even noticed. In fact, it is estimated that a third of the human population are chronically infected with Toxoplasma. 3/n

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

5 years

Was surprised to discover I was selected as one of Israel's "100 most influential people"! Which lasted about 5 minutes before the post was corrected to tag the real Shahar Bracha that actually got the award

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

2 years

Spent the weekend climbing some rocks on mars

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

3 months

Using parasites makes a lot of sense- our bodies are complex, but parasites evolved through intensive natural selection to modify the human body in remarkably specific, robust, sophisticated ways. This is often the exact definition of what we try to do in medicine & biotechnology

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

This is important for showing that the protein Toxoplasma secrets is functional and could potentially replace the missing MeCP2 in Rett syndrome neurons. 11/n

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

1 year

Shared my entire paperpile library with someone today and I find it hard to imagine a more vulnerable act than that

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

Another thing is its three specialized secretion systems, through which it can secrete proteins into the cells of the host it infects. 5/n

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

This wasn’t a straightforward journey though, because Toxoplasma is quite a weird organism (an apicomplexan protist), and its not fully understood what makes some protein secreted and some not. 8/n

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

3 months

@datreeio @eboyden3 It has been a long challenging journey, and seeing all this work come to fruition has been unimaginably satisfying. Grateful for all my amazing collaborators, and hoping that this is just the start!

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

A special thing about Toxoplasma is that when it infects humans, it knows how to migrate into our central nervous system, bypass the blood-brain-barrier and persist in the brain for a very long time. 4/n

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

As a newly minted 25-year-old, today I learned how to screen-print, listened to punk while working on my PhD paper, got silly slippers, celebrated with mexican food and got into a mini existential crisis after coincidentally finding a first ever tiny white hair. Tired but happy.

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

This is the tip of the iceberg, and there are many things that must be done until Toxoplasma parasites can be used to deliver therapy in people. 12/n

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

3 months

@datreeio After experiencing it first-hand with this project, I became obsessed with this idea, and it is what I'm working on now at @eboyden3 's lab

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

Some nice Scottish views on the way back from #IDRIS2019 . Was a great conference, and it's always fun to meet and discuss ideas with fellow parasitologists, the diversity and interdisciplinarity of the research within the field always amazes me!

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

Had an intense &amazing time at the Gordon Research Conference &Seminar on host-parasite interactions, survived my first ever conference talk, had great poster conversations and met many wonderful people. The parasitology community is incredible and I'm so happy to be part of it!

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

These important skills were developed as an adaptation to Toxoplasma’s niche as a chronic intracellular parasite, through the co-evolution of Toxoplasma and its hosts. 6/n

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

2 years

Carrying home the hard drive with my new data like a precious newborn back from the hospital, terrified and excited and knowing full well I'm not going to sleep tonight

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

3 months

@datreeio This was one the most challenging parts of this project. Making the process of harnessing and engineering a wider diversity of organisms could be an extremely high leverage point for enabling faster discovery and development of new tools and technologies for biology

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

I made a Toxoplasma mutant library

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

5 years

Ran my first actual neural network code today! Sheep looking good, now onto my cells. @GoogleColab is awesome.

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

2 years

NO I'M NOT ANGRY SORRY I'M JUST EDITING MY DNA CONSTRUCTS WHILE TALKING TO YOU

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

2 years

Should I go back to twitter? I think I'm going to go back to twitter.

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

I infect plated foreskins with brain-eating parasites and when they finish consuming all the foreskin I pass them to a new one

Sofía Villalpando

@sofiabiologista

6 years

Guys, if you are a biologist, please tell me a common thing you do that "regular people" find really weird.... now it's your time to shine.

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

4 years

Just got my vaccine shot! Thanks to all the healthcare workers, scientists, essential workers, WFHers, maskers, home-stayers and science communicators who are making this happen.

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

Got my airbnb booked for #ToxoUK2018 !!! @NatiMallo @SheinerLab

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

7 years

Lab's first preprint! Let the WorMachine do your c. elegans phenotyping for you

Oded Rechavi

@OdedRechavi

7 years

🎉Fresh Preprint! Use WorMachine, our new software, to automatically score your C.elegans phenotypes! Here's a demo:

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

5 years

Just realized that one of my worst pitfalls in writing, writing way too lengthily, is actually me trying to artificially increase the resolution of the language by using too many words and subconsciously expecting someone to run a smoothing function on my text while reading it.

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

5 years

Had an incredible night at the Wise observatory in Mitzpe Ramon. We brought a 8 inch telescope and got to see Jupiter with its four moons aligned, Saturn (and Titan?) which looked like a surreal distant emoji of itself, some of our moon, and take a cool picture with the milky way

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

4 years

New covid vaccination tents and festive lights in Rabin square, Tel Aviv center. Country probably reached almost 10% of the population vaccinated today

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

4 years

This is my professional zoom setup

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

2 years

Boozy blood cultures and dirt cups with (some of) the lab model organisms in the Boyden Halloween party

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

7 months

Mount Tom, MA

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

Yesterday I was at the @roslininstitute , where Dolly was cloned and there are sheep in every corner

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

7 years

Was lucky enough to hear David Baltimore in Glasgow today. One of the first slides: "DNA is dull; RNA is fascinating"

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

2 year since I last worked with worms but I still have my chunking skills

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

7 years

Just had the greatest idea: Molecular gastronomy + expansion microscopy. Using edible water-expandable polymers to expand foods 100X.

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

Quiet evening before heading to Glasgow again

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

5 years

Is there anyone working on possible organism/cell-based COVID-19 diagnostics? What about engineered systems with reporter that could detect RNA sequence in solution via an RNAi response? #synbio @kindofgeometry @itamar_lev

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

Yesss! late birthday present to myself just arrived

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

oooh I wondered if that would work for Toxoplasma transfections. Just happen to need a new electroporator now...

Saad Bhamla

@BhamlaLab

6 years

In our philosophy of frugal science, we are sharing today our latest tool from the lab: a 20-cent electroporator, which we call an ElectroPen. Almost a year ago, when I started my lab @GeorgiaTech , a team of high school students @lamberths_iGEM led by @jastandeven reached out...

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

Applying the handicap principle to biofilms: condition‐dependent signalling in Bacillus subtilis microbial communities #microbiology #evolutionarybiology #theoreticalbiology #signaling

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

Day 4 of this visit to the lab in Glasgow, and already reached peak cliche

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

5 years

Excited to provide recommendations on where to hang in Glasgow to all my wormy friends from the @OdedRechavi lab! @LeahHouri @itamar_lev @DanaOr4 @PinkSci @Toker_IA

Piali Sengupta

@SenguptaLab

5 years

#Worm21 Announcing the first ever Int'l Worm Meeting to be held in a non-US location. June 19-23, 2021, Glasgow, Scotland - organized by Barbara Conradt and me. With the legendary @wormraiser as Keynote. Check out awesome venue below and importantly, the great party site!

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

7 years

On top of being the first to 3D print glass in high resolution, Micron 3D Printing can also print METAL now!

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

8 years

My best science buddy published his first paper! Complex and cool story unraveled w great team work

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

A nice surprise! Beautiful 'lil creatures

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

Are there any travel fellowships that could please support me for this research visit?

Diego Huet

@HuetLab

6 years

Toxoplasma is not only a parasite, it is also a German punk band!

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

4 years

So cool - Sequencing and analyzing DNA from ancient scrolls (made of skin) to fit them together & gain insights on life and religion >2000 years ago. Got to watch how this brilliant project unraveled by lots of hard work & ingenuity from the team @NeuhofMoran Sarit, Hila, Or

Oded Rechavi

@OdedRechavi

4 years

Here’s a wild story on how we tried to piece the Dead Sea Scrolls “puzzle” by sequencing ancient DNA extracted from the animal skins on which the scrolls were written. Please read the @CellCellPress paper, retweet and checkout my short thread👇

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

7 years

Saturday morning jam-making

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

2 years

@michael_nielsen I didn't test it on GPT4, but for GPT3 I found you can ask it for instructions on how to get from one place to another by walking, and it will give pretty good instructions (including both things like "turn from SmallStreet1 to SmallStreet2" and "head south toward MainStreet")

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

2 years

@KordingLab How about the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines?

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

@OdedRechavi Its amazing what Toxoplasma can do

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

7 years

We could have used a bit more illumina-tion

Oded Rechavi

@OdedRechavi

7 years

There's a Blackout but the Rechavi lab don't care: 🎼Sitting 'round crying over a broken heart.. .. Even if we're just cloning in the dark 🎼 - Deep sequencing using a flash light! @shaharbrr

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

5 years

The International Space Station over Tel Aviv tonight 👋👩‍🚀 @Space_Station

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

😃 @TeamSpaceIL

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

Thesis-writing advice: find a really good book to read. You'll just want to finish every writing session as fast as possible and get it over with so you can go back to your book. #phdchat

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

9 months

Moreover, by focusing your resources on first creating it, you gain invaluable tools for then understanding it

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

2 years

@ilex_ulmus One pro of coming from a culture that is obsessed with reproduction (Israel) is that egg freezing for all women over 30 is subsidized (~$2-3k), and can even be free if you or your partner have medical reasons. Planning to take advantage of this the minute I'm eligible.

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

4 years

Awesome meeting! Protists are the coolest #ESOP #protistonline

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

That whole thread. Super exciting stuff from @itamar_lev , Hila and the group!

Oded Rechavi

@OdedRechavi

6 years

Check out our newest work! perplexed by "Transgenerational Epigenetics Inheritance"? 1. You may think "it's easy to understand how traits are inherited in worms, since these are the simplest model animals for studying genetics" - Well, it gets complicated…

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

2 years

@michael_nielsen What I found cool is that it seemed like when it was missing knowledge about an area of smaller streets, it knew how to replace it with a more general "go south toward Main Street". It made more mistakes the further and more obscure the streets were, but I wonder how GPT4 fares

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

4 years

Awesome work from @AndrewEMaclean @SheinerLab and colleagues, on the divergent respiratory mitochondrial protein complexes of Toxoplasma, and also a great demonstration of the power of careful biochemical characterization to uncover mechanisms of parasite-specific drug targeting

Sheiner lab

@SheinerLab

4 years

by mapping the proteins of all 4 #mitochondria respiratory complexes of the human pathogen #Toxoplasma , we discovered what proteins make up complex III, the target of the anti-malarial #atovaquone . @WCIPGLASGOW @iiiglasgow @Cambridge_Uni ; @MRC_MBU @AndrewEMaclean #preprint 👇

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

7 years

Found notes showing that my grandma, coming to Israel from Serbia after the holocaust brought some undergarments,bedsheets and 5kg of salami

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

8 years

I move liquids from one place to another. If I'm lucky, one day I will get to move words from one place to another. #badlyexplainyourjob

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

1 year

@ATinyGreenCell And now add it to

Agrobacterium expressing a type III secretion system delivers Pseudomonas effectors into plant...

Nature Communications - Agrobacterium infection can cause defense responses in many plants, which leads to transformation recalcitrance. Here, the authors express type III secretion system in...

www.nature.com

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

7 months

Best buds (Mount Tom, MA)

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

4 years

@OdedRechavi @eboyden3 Thank you! And thanks for helping me become the scientist I am today, couldn't have dreamt of a better mentor for this wild ride of a PhD :)

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

4 years

Happy that both of my parents and my grandfather got their first Pfizer-BNT shots in the last few days

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

6 years

Failed attempt to see the moon eclipse from Glasgow

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

2 years

@michael_nielsen I was asking about travel between two small streets around Somerville that are 10 street turns apart, so it's unlikely this exact trip could be quoted from somewhere online, but it probably tried to assemble it from parts that were

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

3 years

So cool!

K

@kindofgeometry

3 years

@GiliGreenbaum A new interactive repository that will improve evaluation and dissemination of model results. Accepts models in multiple languages, but requires no programming knowledge to run/distribute model analyses. Want your models to be accessible?

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Shahar Bracha

@shaharbrr

7 years

Why I like libraries, parks and the beach.

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