Scientific biography, Ayala Shiber, PI
I have earned my Bachelor in biotechnological engineering at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba (Israel). During my Bachelor studies, I was a research assistant in the industry, in the Bio-Technology Laboratories, Research & Development division of Hazera Genetics Inc., Kiryat Gat, Israel. I went on to earn my Master’s in plant genetics at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba (Israel), studying sex determination in cucumber, leading to increased yield. This research was published as part of a book collection (Shiber et al., 2008). Then, I was recruited to the industry again, as the manager of the DNA markers development unit, Bio-Technology Laboratories, Research & Development division, Hazera Genetics Inc., Kiryat Gat, Israel. There I led multiple projects in the field of quantitative genetics aiming to develop and implement advanced technologies to produce genomic-based breeding pipelines, including genotyping technologies, association studies, gene discovery, and quantitative genetics analysis strategies. These led to several patent applications. I went on to study biochemistry and molecular biology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, where I earned my doctorate in 2014. My PhD focused on the study of the interplay of the Ubiquitin-proteasome degradation system and the molecular chaperone systems. I have utilized the model eukaryotic organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae to study the intrinsic properties of protein quality control signals. Utilizing a wide array of genetic, biochemistry and cell biology techniques, I discovered ubiquitin function as a signal for chaperone regulated sequestration in the cell. We also uncovered a mechanism leading to aging-related accumulation of aggregates in the cell. These discoveries resulted in a series of publications (Furth et al., 2011; Shiber et al., 2013; Shiber and Ravid, 2014) including a publication describing a novel method developed in my PhD, based on Fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS), to evaluate quantitatively aggregation in living cells (Shiber et al., 2014). In order to expand my skills, I decided to move to Germany, for post-doctoral research, in the group of Prof. Bernd Bukau, in a joint position in the molecular biology center of Heidelberg University, and the German cancer research center. Prof. Bernd Bukau group is one of the leading groups in the world in the study of protein biogenesis and quality control. There I was awarded the Humboldt Research fellowship for early career scientists, which allowed me to discover co-translational assembly is a prevalent mechanism for complex formation in eukaryotic cells. This mechanism protects midfolding-prone subunits from aggregation (Kramer et al., 2018; Shiber et al., 2018).
I am an independent group leader at the faculty of Biology, the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology since August 2019. Our main research objective is to resolve the long standing question: How do cells direct their proteome to fold to their native, functional state and avoid misfolding diseases. We are exploring the mechanisms guiding the folding and assembly of newly synthesized proteins into multi-molecular complexes as well as the mechanisms for degradation of “lonely” subunits. We are studying the role of the ribosome as a platform for coordinating complex assembly during synthesis, by advanced techniques combining biochemistry and deep sequencing such as selective ribosome profiling as well as super resolution microscopy. We are also developing tools for studying single molecule mRNA-protein interactions, in vivo.