BAR-ILAN INSTITUTE OF NANOTECHNOLOGY & ADVANCED MATERIALS | 2019 ANNUAL REPORT

Dr. Nitzan Gonen is an expert in sex determination, genome editing and stem cell biology. She joined BINA and The Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences at Bar-Ilan University in 2019. Dr. Gonen acquired her B.Sc, M.Sc, and Ph.D at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. She moved to London for her postdoctoral fellowship to study mammalian sex determination using both mice models and stem cells in Prof. Robin Lovell-Badge’s laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute. “Our lab is mainly interested in researching and understanding, at the molecular level, how sex is determined during embryonic development, or in other words, how does an embryo develop into either a male or a female. In mammals, sex determination is genetically driven, with XY individuals appearing as males and XX individuals as females. However, if the process of sex determination is impaired, individuals with XY chromosomes can appear as females, or vice versa (sex reverse; prevalence 1: 2500-4000 newborns). During embryonic development, the bipotential gonad develops into either testes or ovaries depending on the activity of several key transcription factors. In the lab, we use mice as a model system along with embryonic stem cells from humans and mice to better understand the regulation of these key transcription factors and how they interact with one another,” says Dr. Gonen. “We employ cutting-edge techniques including CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing, transgenic mice production, advanced sequencing techniques, tissue engineering as well as microscopy and molecular biology. We also hope to employ stem cells and tissue engineering techniques in order to develop an in vitro system to model the mammalian gonads for regenerative medicine purposes.” Dr. Gonen collaborates with scientists located both in Israel and abroad. She works closely with Dr. Noam Kaplan from the Technion and Dr. Stefan Schoenfelder from The Babraham Institute in Cambridge, England, on genome architecture. She also works with Prof. Kenneth McElreavery and Anu Bashamboo from the Institute Pasteur in Paris, as well as Prof. Andrew Sinclair from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, on uncovering causes of sex reversal in human patients with Disorders of Sex Development (DSDs). “BINA is a leading multidisciplinary institute that combines expert scientists with diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise, some of which are very relevant to my research. My collaborations with other scientists and experts in tissue engineering, high resolution microscopy and additional fields will enhance our understanding of the mammalian gonads and the process of sex determination.” Dr. Nitzan Gonen 15