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Bastiaan Bargmann - Israel

Bastiaan Bargmann
Bastiaan Bargmann inspecting gene-edited tomato plants in the Efroni lab at HUJI

What I Did

My thanks go to CALS Global for giving me the opportunity for a travel grant for proposal preparation with HUJI Faculty of Agriculture, Food, and Environment. The visit to Israel took place from September 7 to 11 in 2019. My main point of contact was Dr. Idan Efroni who is a Senior Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at the HUJI Robert H. Smith Institute of Plant Sciences and Genetics in Agriculture in Rehovot. Dr. Efroni’s work includes a focus on regeneration and adventitious root development in Arabidopsis and tomato (https://idanef.wixsite.com/efronilab). We have worked together in the past, we were both post-doctoral researchers at New York University in the lab of Dr. Ken Birnbaum, and have co-authored peer-reviewed papers previously. The intent of this visit was to prepare and submit a BARD (US-ISRAEL BINATIONAL AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT FUND) grant together as well as to have discussions and plan additional cooperation.

Upon arrival, I was met by Dr. Eilon Shani of the Tel Aviv University, with whom I overlapped during postdoctoral studies at the University of California, San Diego in the lab of Dr. Mark Estelle. Dr. Shani is a professor at the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences and his work focuses on the study of plant hormones and transport mechanisms (https://en-lifesci.tau.ac.il/profile/eilonsh). He showed me around Tel Aviv and Jaffa, we enjoyed a meal and we discussed our work together that afternoon. I subsequently went to my hotel and met up with Dr. Efroni for dinner in Rehovot that evening.

Dr. Efroni, Dr. Shani, and myself met up with Dr. Anthony Bishopp the next day, who was also in Rehovot for the Duckweed Research and Applications Conference. I have met with Dr. Bishopp on several previous occasions at various locations. He is a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Faculty of Science at the University of Nottingham whose work focuses on hormonal signaling in vascular tissue development (https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/biosciences/people/anthony.bishopp). The four of us toured the ancient city of Jerusalem and saw many beautiful holy sites.

The following morning Dr. Bishopp and myself gave back-to-back seminars for a joint TAU and HUJI audience at the Institute of Plant Sciences and Genetics in Agriculture in Rehovot. After the seminar I met with several faculty members to discuss their work, including Dr. Alexander Vainstein of the HUJI (https://plantscience.agri.huji.ac.il/people/alexander-vainstein), Dr. Leor Eshed-Williams of the HUJI (https://plantscience.agri.huji.ac.il/people/leor-eshed-williams), and Dr. Sigal Savaldi-Golstein of the Technion Institute (https://plantbiologylab.net.technion.ac.il/). That afternoon Dr. Efroni gave me a tour of his lab and the institute facilities, and introduced me to his lab-members. We then continued to finalize the BARD grant proposal we had been working on for several months previously. This work carried on the next day and we submitted the grant for internal review at HUJI that afternoon, the proposal was submitted to BARD on September 16th.

Bastiaan Bargmann
Bazaar in the ancient city of Jerusalem (left to right: Bas Bargmann, Anthony Bishopp, Idan Efroni, Eilon Shani).

Short-term accomplishments and long-term goals

The short-term impact of this visit was that we were able to collaborate in-person to finalize the preparation of a grant proposal submission to BARD. Being able to do this face-to-face, as opposed to over email or Skype, greatly expedited this process. The proposal is titled Non-transgenic gene editing for diverse tomato germplasms. It is intended as a three-year, $310,000 project that also includes Dr. Alexander Goldshmidt of the Volcani Institute (https://www.agri.gov.il/people/1463.aspx), who we have met with previously. The funding on the Virginia Tech side is intended to pay for a graduate student for two and a half years. Dr. Efroni has also agreed to act as the hosting faculty for a Fulbright grant proposal that will be submitted by my graduate student Kelsey Reed this October, the intent is to work in the Efroni lab for three months to acquire skills in tomato protoplast manipulation and CRISPR application.

The long-term goals of the partnership between Dr. Efroni (as well as other potential collaborators I met during this trip) and myself include continued efforts at the acquisition of joint funding. Furthermore, we will keep an eye out for opportunities to work together and contribute to each other’s publications. I believe great synergy can be found in discussion and collaboration between labs with similar yet divergent interests.