Daniel Sher

Postdoctoral Associate
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Department of Biology
MIT 48-106
15 Vassar Street
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-253-8686 (lab), 617-253-1857 (office)
Email: dsher at mit.edu

Education:

2000 B.Sc. Biology, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
2007 Ph.D. Biology, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel

Research Interests:

My general interest lies in "chemical ecology" - the way organisms communicate through chemistry, the chemicals that mediate these interactions, and the way these interactions and chemicals evolve or have evolved. This is a fascinating field of research with important implications in understanding the dynamics of ecosystems. In addition, studying these interactions often brings with it the discovery of novel chemical compounds which have biotechnological, pharmacological or medical uses - antibiotics, for example, are often synthesized by microorganisms in order to fight other microbes.
I am currently interested in understanding to what extent Prochlorococcus interact with other microorganisms, specifically the heterotrophic bacteria with which it shares the marine environment: do networks of interspecies interactions such as symbiosis, competition and predation exist in oligotrophic oceans?

Publications:

Sher, D. Fishman, Y., Melamed-Book, N., Zhang, M. and Zlotkin, E. (2007)
Osmotically-Driven Prey Disintegration in the Gastro-Vascular Cavity of the green hydra by a Pore-Forming Protein.
FASEB J. published online Aug 6, doi: 10.1096/fj.07-9133com

Sher, D. and Zlotkin, E. (2007)
A hydra with many heads – protein and polypeptide toxins in hydra and their different biological roles.
Toxicon, Submitted.

Sher, D., Knebel, A., Bsor, T., Nesher, N., Tal, T., Morgenstern, D., Cohen E., Fishman, Y. and Zlotkin, E. (2005)
Toxic polypeptides of the hydra—a bioinformatic approach to cnidarian allomones.
Toxicon 45(7): 865-879

Sher, D., Fishman, Y., Zhang, M., Lebendiker, M., Gaathon, A., Mancheño, J. M. and Zlotkin, E. (2005).
Hydralysins, a new category of ß-pore-forming toxins in cnidaria.
J. Biol. Chem. 280(24): 22847-22855

Arnon, T., Potikha, T., Sher, D., Elazar,. M., Mao, W., Tal, T., Bosmans, F., Tytgat, J., Ben-Arie, N. and Zlotkin, E. (2005)
BjaIT: a novel scorpion a-toxin selective for insects – unique pharmacological tool.
Insect Biochem. Mol. Biol. 35(3): 187-195

Zhang, M., Fishman, Y., Sher, D. and Zlotkin, E. (2003).
Hydralysin – a novel animal-group selective paralytic and cytolytic protein from a non-cnidocystic origin in hydra.
Biochemistry 42(30): 8939-8944.