Drori Lab

The Drori Lab - General

Ice has an enormous effect on our life and the life of smaller organisms around us. We are interested in studying how ice grows in the presence of different additives, aiming to develop new ways to inhibit and to control ice growth. Specifically, we study the interaction between ice crystals and natural/synthetic molecules that inhibit ice growth. Natural molecules such as ice-binding proteins (IBPs), or antifreeze proteins (AFPs), are able to inhibit ice growth and to protect organisms such as fish, insects, plants and fungi from freezing injury.

May 2024: Congratulations to Tara Shtern for receiving the best poster award at the YU student research conference!

October 2023: Here's a great video showing some of the work we do at the Drori lab.

This video was created and edited by Imagination Creations who did an amazing job!

November 2023: Ice-binding proteins protocols book published! A long and great journey with great author contributions.

Have a look here

September 2023 group picture Infra-Red mode!

August 2023: Collaboration with Amish Patel's group leads to a JACS paper, which shows that adsorption is the limiting factor for AFP accumulation on ice. Many more to come!

Read it here

May 2023: First paper from our new thermal imaging system is published in Review of Scientific Instruments.

Read it here

September 2022: We welcome Dr. Martin Zalazar, who joined the lab as a senior research scientist!

March 2022: Grant awarded!

The National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) of the USDA has awarded the Drori lab $274,000 to develop new imaging methods of frozen food, in an ultimate goal of improving the quality of frozen food products. More details here.

January 2022: We are looking for a postdoctoral fellow to join our team in Aug 2022. Please have a look here .

November 2021: Our paper made it to the cover feature in ChemPhysChem

Link

September 2021: Ran gave a seminar at UPenn's Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering department.

August 2021: The lab's first clathrate hydrates paper is published in ChemPhysChem

We found that safranine O binds and inhibits clathrate hydrates and that it assembles in solution and forms lamellar structures. These structures might bind to ice and hydrates after formation in solution. Read more here.

November 2020: Our paper is now published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry B

Antifreeze proteins both accelerate and inhibit ice growth! How?

Have a look here.

November 2019: Another paper published in JACS!

Antifreeze proteins from fish and plants exhibit synergistic enhancement of their ability to prevent freezing.

May 2019: Research grant awarded to the Drori lab

In July 2019 the lab was awarded a grant from the Petroleum Research Fund of the American Chemical Society!

November 2018 group picture

July 2018: First paper of the lab was published in JACS!

Using microfluidics and fluorescence microscopy we recently demonstrated that antifreeze glycoproteins bind irreversibly to ice, and that their adsorption rate to ice determines their ability to inhibit ice growth.

From the news:

https://phys.org/news/2017-10-scientists-newfound-responses-temperatures.html

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/supramolecules-break-the-ice/1017548.article

https://blogs.yu.edu/facultynews/2019/07/26/drori-receives-major-grant/

https://blogs.yu.edu/news/new-study-uncovers-how-antifreeze-protein-mix-protects-fish-from-freezing/

https://blogs.yu.edu/facultynews/2022/03/26/dr-ran-drori-crystallizes-his-research/