It's a microbial world out there
...and we love it!
Scroll down to read how we combine
bioinformatics and experimental approaches
to study antibiotic resistance, CRISPR-Cas
and other fascinating microbial systems.
The Burstein Lab
Our Research
Metagenomics, Machine learning, Molecular microbiology, and Fun!
We aim to better understand key interaction mechanisms within microbial communities and to promote their application in biotechnology and medicine. Specifically, we are interested in discovering novel antibiotic resistance genes, CRISPR-Cas, and bacterial secretion systems.
We study microorganisms in a variety of natural environments, and combine cutting-edge metagenomic techniques with tailored machine-learning and molecular biology methods to predict and experimentally validate the functions of the studied systems.
Publications Highlights
A diverse repertoire of
anti-defense systems is
encoded in the leading region
of plasmids
bioRxiv 2023
Deciphering microbial gene
function using natural
language processing
Nature Communications 2022
Programmed DNA destruction by miniature CRISPR-Cas14 enzymes
Science 2018
New CRISPR–Cas systems from uncultivated microbes
Nature 2017
Major bacterial lineages are essentially devoid of CRISPR-Cas viral defence systems
Nature Communications 2016
Genomic analysis of 38 Legionella species identifies large and diverse effector repertoires
Nature Genetics 2016
Our Team
David (Dudu) Burstein
Principal Investigator
Karin Mittelman
Research Associate
Bruria Samuel
Ph.D. Student
Danielle Miller
Ph.D. Student
(joint with Prof. Adi Stern)
Adi Yannai
Ph.D. Student
Shirley Croitoru
Ph.D. Student
Guy Shur
Ph.D. Student
Yatir Solan
M.Sc. Student
Ella Rannon
M.Sc. Student
Maya Ben Haim
M.Sc. Student
Edan Gabay
M.Sc. Student
Ofir Arias
Software Specialist
Tomer Parket
Data Analyst
Emilie Mordo
B.Sc. Project Student
Eden Spigelman
B.Sc. Project Student
Stay in Touch
Office: +972-3-640-8715
Lab: +972-3-640-7525
Fax: +972-3-642-2046
davidbur@tauex.tau.ac.il