Melanogaster , flies that serve as a model organism because they lack the immense complexity that exists in mammalian brains and are highly amenable to genetic manipulation. We analyze the effects of social opportunity or challenges on specific behavioral responses of the individual in social encounters, such as courtship display, aggressive behaviors, group dynamics and reward-related behaviors, and investigate their effect on reproductive physiology. We also identify mechanisms that encode the information gained from the interaction in the brain,” says Prof. Shohat-Ophir. Her fascinating work has bred many research collaborations both in Israel and around the world, including with BIU, Tel Aviv University, Haifa University, the Technion, HHMI, and both Brown and Stanford Universities. One such collaboration has led Prof. Shohat-Ophir to work with BINA’s Dr. Shahar Alon on the spatial localization of RNA molecules within specific brain circuits. Going forward, they plan to use BINA’s well-developed electron-microscopy infrastructure to identify motivation-encoding mechanisms within specific neurons. Her fascinating work has bred many research collaborations both in Israel and around the world, including with BIU, Tel Aviv University, Haifa University, the Technion, HHMI, and both Brown and Stanford Universities Neurobiologist Prof. Galit Shohat-Ophir joined BINA in 2020. She completed her PhD in cancer biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science and went on to complete postdoctoral fellowships at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Janelia Research Campus. Upon returning to Israel from the United States, Prof. Shohat-Ophir established her lab at BIU’s Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences, where she studies the neurogenetics of social behavior. Living in a social environment requires members of the same species to engage in diverse interactions that are essential for their health, survival and reproduction. Effective social interaction requires the ability to recognize other group members and respond appropriately to different social encounters and contexts. The impairment of such functions is evident in several neuropsychiatric disorders such as autism spectrum disorders and schizophrenia. Similar responses to social stimuli are exhibited in very different animals, suggesting that the central systems that enable social interaction originated early in evolution and that similar basic building blocks and biological principles are involved in these processes. In her lab, Prof. Shohat-Ophir and her team explore the neuronal and molecular bases of the most fundamental social behaviors, how they are organized at the biological level and how genes and environment interact to influence behavior. “We study these basic questions in Drosophila Prof. Galit Shohat-Ophir 19
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