Amit Tzur

Affiliations 

Bar-Ilan University

Biography

Amit Tzur studies the physiological and molecular dynamics of proliferating cells to better understand the normal and malignant cell cycle of mammalian systems. Amit received PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and performed post-doctoral training at the Systems Biology Department in Harvard Medical School with Prof. Marc Kirschner. Amit is a Faculty in Bar-Ilan University since 2010, as well as a member of the Bar Ilan Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials and the Israeli Centers for Research Excellence (I-CORE).

Abstract

Extracting cell cycle from immunity

Amit Tzur

Different types of mature B-cell lymphocytes are overall highly similar. Nevertheless, some B cells proliferate intensively, while others rarely do. Here, we demonstrate that a simple binary classification of gene expression in proliferating vs. resting B cells can identify, with remarkable selectivity, coding and non-coding regulators of the mammalian cell cycle, many of which are also post-translationally regulated by the APC/C E3 ligase.

Based on this analysis, we discover a novel regulatory network between the APC/C and the E2F transcription factors and discuss its potential impact on the G1-S transition of the cell cycle. In addition, by focusing on genes whose expression inversely correlates with proliferation, we demonstrate the inherent ability of our approach to also identify in vivo regulators of cell differentiation, cell survival, and other antiproliferative processes. We show that four types of B cells are sufficient for unbiasedly barcoding the cell cycle transcriptome. Relying on data sets of wt, non-transgenic, untreated animals, our approach can be applied to other cell lineages and human data sets.