News & Media
Updates
November 2023 - Since October 7th our mind, heart and soul are bleeding with the horrible massacre of 1400 women, children and elderly by Hamas-ISIS terrorists who also kidnapped over 240 babies, mothers and grandmothers. Switching between shock, devastation and ultimate sorrow we prey for the safe return of the hostages and for some sanity.
Summer 2023 - Farewell to Dr. Anna-Neva who returned to Germany, good luck with paper writing and finding the next position. Congratulations to Siyuan Wang for submitting his PhD thesis on utilization of dust P and Fe by natural Trichodesmium colonies. Two papers are still to be completed and submitted...Good luck with job/post-doc hunting in China
May 2023 - We held a super-successful TRICHO-FEST! We hosted Rene Boiteau and Karl Romanowicz from Oregon State University and Sonya Dyhrman from Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory. This week long event combined sampling, discussions and presentations with relaxed beach dinners, dune exploration and coral observations. All group memebers - Futing Zhang, Coco Koedooder, Siyaun Wang and Anna-Neva Visser shared their newest and most exciting data. We also enjoyed zoom contributions from Meri Eichner & Anxhela Hania (Algatech Centre, Czeck Academy of Sciences), Antonio Colussi (Biology Center of the Academy of Sciences of the Czeck Rebublic) and Danny Ionesco (IGB, Berlin). Not too much Trichodesmium colonies but many new ideas!!
Feb 2023 - Congratulations to Siyuan Wang on a successful defense talk and a hopefully smooth completion of the PhD thesis. This year was strange and Trichodesmium was absent in fall. Subsequently, the excellent & dedicated team of post-docs - Anna-Neva Visser, Coco Koedooder, and Futing Zhang focused on writing their manuscripts on several exciting Tricho-releated stories. We hope that the spring will bring Tricho back....
May 2022 -So far the spring season is not advancing as expected and Trichodesmium is not here yet... But as travel restrictions are finally lifted, we have many international visitors. Welcome all - Jemma Fudum an exchange student through the Lorex program, Jasmin Stimple a summer intern from AWI, and Dr. Meri Eichner and team from Center Algatech of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Hope we will find colonies in May and June and keep everyone busy and happy.
April 2022 - Our first OMICS paper was accepted, showing (as usual) some surprises as for the morphology and identity of Trichodesmium sub-populations, check out the new paper by Koedooder et al. in Frontiers in Microbiology
March 2022 - We welcome the research group of Prof. Dirk de Beer from Max-Planck who will try to measure ROS of natural colonies (among other projects). Let us hope Trichodesmium will show up on time...
Jan 2022 - We welcome our newest post-doc Dr. Anna-Neva Visser from Germany and bid farewell to Antonio Colussi from the Czech Republic who completed a six week internship in our lab. We completed a highly productive field season. We finally managed to keep happy natural colonies for 1-2 weeks under the pier, allowing array of incubations with dust. Our amazing team - Futing, Siyuan, Lina, Coco, Roi, Keren, Antonio, & Anna-Neva conducted over 600 plankton tows and picked and experimented with over 20000 colonies. Thanks everyone!!!
Oct 2021 - We welcome Dr. Lina Sakhneny a new post-doc in our lab and Linoy Hevron who joined us as an intern for the fall. We are starting another ambitious field season, where we hope to conduct multiple experiments for OMICS, advanced imaging and molecular characterization of colony-particle interactions
ASLO 2021 Virtual - Our group presented 5 abstracts that received "virtual" attention and resulted in stimulating discussions and hopefully new research ties.
June 2021 - Trichodesmium in still in the Gulf of Eilat/Aqaba, the longest into the summer we ever recorded... We had a long, somewhat frustrating season with very low colony numbers throughout. We encountered a significant infection of up tp 60% of the colonies with fungi, probably Chytrids (sequencing underway). We are very intrigued and excited by this observations and hope to better characterize Trichodesmium-fungi interactions in situ and if successful in culture.
March-April 2021 - We are starting another Trichodesmium season, although so far without much luck. If all goes well we hope to conduct large experiments combining OMICS with physiological studies on colony-dust interactions
Feb 2021 - JGI have kindly sequenced for us the first metagenomes of our local Trichodesmium puff-shaped colonies. Coco and Max and the super-computer are working around the clock to assemble the data before the next field season, more updates soon...
Dec 2020 - We just completed a very successful field season, collecting about 17,000 colonies, during 6 weeks, with over 30 daily boat rides, each with 6-8 plankton tows!!! We collected many samples for RNA and DNA extractions, tested the effect of dust collected by colonies on their buoyancy, explored ways to increase colony survival and more. Many thanks to all lab members - Siyuan, Coco, Futing, Roi, Murielle, and our drivers Raul and Emmanuelle.
Oct 2020 - Trichodesmium is back at the Red Sea, and despite COVID-19 restrictions we started our autumn field station. We already collected hundreds of colonies and Roi Feinstein, measured for the first time reduction of lepidocrocite by natural colonies with the FeLume system.
Oct 2020 - We welcome Dr. Futing Zhang, a new post-doc in our lab, who took 5 months to make it here from Xiaman University. Futing will study the effect of ocean acidfication on natural Trichodesmium colonies in terms of physiology and nutrient acquisition from dust.
May 2020 - In the middle of the COVID-19 first wave we pooled through a modest but significant field season, orchestrated by Dr. Coco Koedooder and Dr. Subhajit Basu
Feb 2020 - We welcome Dr. Coco Koedooder, a new post-doc in our lab, co-mentored by Maxim Rubin from IOLR. Coco will combine bioinformatics tools to untangle the complex interactions of the Trichodesmium microbiome with dust
In the news
Recorded talk from a national oceanography workshop - Iron availability to phytoplankton: from the molecular to the global (talk starts at 2:23:36)
GEOTRACES (2021) - Science Highlight - A NEW PROXY FOR OCEAN IRON BIOAVAILABILITY
Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry (2021) - Science Highlight
Recorded talk from Departmental Invited Seminar 2021 - Dust and a source of nutrients to the globally importance cyanobacterium Trichodesmium
Iron At the Air-Sea Interface (2021)- SOLAS/SCOR work group. Invited Talk
Smithsonian magazine article (2019)- The complicated Role of Iron in Ocean Health and Climate Change
Science Highlight Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry (2020)- Can phytoplankton help us determine ocean iron bioavailability?
GEOTRACES (2020) - Science Highlight
ISME Behind the Paper (2020) - Ironing out the complexity of phytoplankton-iron interactions
Profile interview (2019, in Hebrew) - News1
Interview (2019, in Hebrew) - Couples in Science
Outreach
Public Climate related Lectures - Degree and a half (in Hebrew)
Prof. Shaked is an active member in the iScientist program for connecting Israeli high-school students to science.
Lecture (in Hebrew) on the Role of the Ocean in Climate Change for High School Students
PPT (in Hebrew) on Ocean Biogeochemistry and Climate or High School Students
