Academic Biographical Information

Dr. Itay Koren is a Senior lecturer and a Principal Investigator at the Faculty of Life Sciences, Bar-Ilan University. His research focuses on protein degradation pathways and quality control mechanisms in health and disease. Itay obtained his PhD in Biochemistry from the Weizmann institute of science where he studied autophagy under the supervision of Prof. Adi Kimchi at the Molecular Genetics Dept. He then moved to Harvard Medical School, Boston, and did his post-doctoral training in Prof. Steve Elledge lab.

Research:

The Koren lab - Functional mapping and characterization of protein degradation pathways and protein quality control mechanisms

Protein degradation plays a key role in nearly all cellular functions and failure to maintain protein homeostasis (proteostasis) has been shown to facilitate the manifestation or progression of a variety of pathological disorders, including inflammation, neurodegeneration and cancer.

In our lab we use genetics (CRISPR screens) coupled with synthetic biology (high density oligonucleotide libraries), biochemistry, cell biology and systems biology approaches to obtain a global view of degradation pathways and to tackle open questions in the protein degradation field. We:

1. Investigate how the degradation machineries of the cell specifically recognize and target substrates;
2. Characterize protein quality control pathways activated by cells to maintain proteostasis;
3. Explore the involvement of specific degradation machineries in various biological processes including receptor trafficking and turnover, organelle protein targeting, antigen presentation and more.
4. Elucidate how defects in protein degradation mechanisms result in disease such as cancer or neurodegeneration.