Michal Levin, PhD student

Phone: +972-4-829-5195

Email:  mlevin@tx.technion.ac.il

I received my B.Sc. in Life Sciences from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 2002 and my M.Sc. degree in Biotechnology from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 2007. Currently, I am performing my Ph.D. studies in the Faculty of Biology of the Technion under the supervision of Itai Yanai.

Research interests:

Evo-Dev-Omics - embryonic gene expression analysis across six nematode species

Metazoan development is a highly conserved process governed by different gene regulatory circuits comprised of different genes across species. Precise temporal and spatial gene regulation plays a major role in developmental systems. Comparing developmental regulatory programs of both phenotypically similar and divergent organisms is a powerful test of the hypothesis that morphological evolution is predominantly based upon modulation of gene expression across time and space. Further it can provide insights into the plasticity of the genomic program for encoding phenotypically similar organisms with different underlying programs. We are exploring embryonic gene expression programs of a stable set of orthologs and quickly evolving paralogs across a phylogeny of nematodes. In a preliminary experiment - performed in Craig Hunter's lab - custom-designed species-specific microarrays were used to measure transcript abundance in precisely staged C.elegans and C.briggsae embryos. The examined stages spanned the first quarter of embryonic development (4-cell to 190-cell stage). Despite sharing an almost identical developmental program these species show a highly divergent set of gene expression profiles. To further explore the relationship between distant species and their underlying developmental gene expression networks we are expanding our analysis to a set of six completely sequenced nematode species (C.elegans, C.briggsae, C.remanei, C.brenneri, C.japonica and P.pacificus) and to embryological stages spanning the whole embryonic development (4-cell stage to hatching). A comparison of the timing of four embryonic milestone stages (4-cell, gastrulation, morphogenesis and hatching) has been completed for all of the six nematode species using live imaging and DAPI staining techniques. Based on the sequenced genomes of all the six species, custom-designed microarrays bearing the whole gene set of each of the species will be used to obtain expression levels of all genes along embryonic development for each species. The obtained data set will enable us to screen for gene expression conservation and divergence across gene families. Further we will map regulatory sequences for specific expression profiles both within and across species. An essential aim is to model the degree of expression divergence as a function of both gene functionality and sequence alterations in regulatory sequences. This approach will provide a two-dimensional picture of gene expression patterns along both time and species allowing an in-depth analysis of the underlying principles of morphological evolution.