Yishay Pinto’s lab at the Faculty of Life Sciences at Bar-Ilan University investigates the crucial role of bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria, or phages) in human health, using genomic, computational, and synthetic biology methods. Phages in the gut not only shape bacterial populations, they also interact with human cells, impact disease development, and modulate the immune system. At the same time, they harbor candidates for phage therapy, making them particularly relevant in the current era of antimicrobial resistance.

For his PhD in Genomics at Bar-Ilan University, Dr. Pinto made groundbreaking discoveries in genomic plasticity, identifying a novel mechanism of enzyme-induced evolution in primate genomes, and revealing the importance of editing micro RNAs (miRNA) in human cancers.

His scientific trajectory changed after hearing a talk on the human microbiome.  Shifting from analyzing one genome at a time to exploring multiple genomes simultaneously felt like “shifting from a single tree to a dense forest teeming with diversity and interactions.” As he studied the microbiome, he discovered that the most abundant entity in the human gut had been overlooked: bacteriophages, or phages—the many different viruses that infect bacteria.

As a senior bioinformatician at the Israeli start-up Wild Biotech, Dr. Pinto led an innovative study analyzing the gut microbiome of more than 400 wild animals, significantly expanding the prokaryotic tree of life.

In parallel, in a postdoc at the Faculty of Medicine at Bar-Ilan University, he conducted a study of 400 women to identify early biomarkers for gestational diabetes.

During his postdoctoral research at the School of Medicine at Stanford University, he utilized his expertise in genomics to address fundamental questions about human phages, leading to the development of Phanta—a tool for profiling gut bacteriophages and their bacterial hosts in the human gut, with the goal of promoting phage-inclusive studies of microbiomes. Dr. Pinto hopes to eventually develop phage-based diagnostic tools for infections and diseases. This novel perspective will enhance Israel’s leadership in microbiome research and pave the way for groundbreaking discoveries.