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- April 4, 2022
Hermona Soreq, EMET Prize Winner 2022: My GIF Story
from Prof. Hermona Soreq (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
My GIF story echoes my research and links it with friendship and collegial networks. I am a molecular neuroscientist, searching for short and long RNA regulatory molecules which modulate the brain’s acute and long-lasting response to changes in its surroundings. Going over the list of my GIF partners over the years reveals that much of my know-how in molecular neuroscience developed during those projects, and that my GIF story actually started many years before our first joint GIF grant was awarded and is ongoing till today.
I first visited Fritz Eckstein in Göttingen as a PhD student, in a snowy winter day; and that was the beginning of a long-lasting friendship with Fritz and his late wife, Julia. In those days, RNA-therapeutics was still a distant dream, with Fritz being one of its first initiators. We won several joint grants from National Israeli and German sources before submitting and winning our GIF project, which studied the prospects of RNA-therapeutics and raised statements that we ‘precede our time’. Indeed, it took a global-pandemics for RNA-therapeutics to become a reality. Later on, Fritz spent a sabbatical year at our department and was awarded an Honorary PhD at The Hebrew University, and I still try to travel to Gottingen as often as I can.
My second GIF project, with Weiland Huttner and Paul Layer combined my interests in the genetics of acetylcholine signaling, reflecting the heart of my research; and I look forward to meeting Paul yet again at the next cholinergic conference. The third was a DIP project led by Cord-Michael Becker from Erlangen’s Medical school; and it led to my being awarded an honorary PhD at Erlangen and to a Liz Meitner Humboldt award. I spent that time in the Charité in Berlin and initiated other long-lasting friendships, with my Berlin host, Arno Villringer and his team and with Andreas Meisel and his group, with whom we recently completed an Einstein foundation-supported project; Kasia Winek from the Charite joined my lab as an MD/PhD post-doctoral fellow, and will soon move to The Leibniz Institute at Jena as a young group leader. I regularly visit the Charite as an advisory committee member, and look forward to those meetings returning to be in-person ones.
Getting back to RNA biology, I later on joined forces with Reinhard Lührmann from Göttingen for another GIF grant dealing with alternative splicing; and the next one has been led by Michael Heneka from Bonn, where I serve as an Advisory committee member at the local center of excellence on ImmunoSensation. That project dealt with RNA regulators of Alzheimer’s disease, and we are currently busy writing up its results. Last, but not least- I did not submit any GIF project this year, and was asked to advise the foundation in assessing applications submitted by others. In conclusion, GIF grants are all about scientific research and the culture on which it is based, and I am happy to have been part of this story for several decades.
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