Biography:Eran Segal

From HandWiki
Eran Segal
NationalityIsraeli
Alma materStanford University
Tel Aviv University
AwardsOverton Prize[1]
Scientific career
InstitutionsWeizmann Institute of Science
Doctoral advisorDaphne Koller[2]

Eran Segal is a computational biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science.[2] He works on developing quantitative models for all levels of gene regulation,[3] including transcription, chromatin, and translation.[4][5][6]

He gained his BA in Computer Science and Economics from Tel Aviv University in 1998[2] and his PhD from Stanford University in 2004 advised by Daphne Koller.[7] In 2007 he was awarded the Overton Prize[1] by the International Society for Computational Biology. In 2011 he was made a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Personalized Nutrition

Segal claims there is no "One size fits all" diet, in the sense that people will respond differently to certain types of food.

Through a study utilising continuous glucose monitoring and food journals, he produced some evidence that the glucose response to specific foods differ significantly between people. He hypothesised that personalized food plans based on further research could be beneficial in reducing the occurrence of diabetes.

Later, he employed blood DNA testing, feces analysis (gut bacteria) to gather data which was analysed with a machine learning method to create personalised diets that were expected to improve glucose responses after eating. This method was tested on a population size of 26, the results of the study supported his hypothesis, though required further testing.[8][9]

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 Maisel, M. (2007). "ISCB Honors Temple F. Smith and Eran Segal". PLoS Computational Biology 3 (6): e128. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.0030128. PMID 17604447. Bibcode2007PLSCB...3..128M. 
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~eran/biography.html Eran Segal biography
  3. Kaplan, N.; Moore, I. K.; Fondufe-Mittendorf, Y.; Gossett, A. J.; Tillo, D.; Field, Y.; Leproust, E. M.; Hughes, T. R. et al. (2008). "The DNA-encoded nucleosome organization of a eukaryotic genome". Nature 458 (7236): 362–366. doi:10.1038/nature07667. PMID 19092803. Bibcode2009Natur.458..362K. 
  4. Segal, E.; Fondufe-Mittendorf, Y.; Chen, L.; Thåström, A.; Field, Y.; Moore, I. K.; Wang, J. P. Z.; Widom, J. (2006). "A genomic code for nucleosome positioning". Nature 442 (7104): 772–778. doi:10.1038/nature04979. PMID 16862119. Bibcode2006Natur.442..772S. 
  5. Segal, E.; Shapira, M.; Regev, A.; Pe'er, D.; Botstein, D.; Koller, D.; Friedman, N. (2003). "Module networks: Identifying regulatory modules and their condition-specific regulators from gene expression data". Nature Genetics 34 (2): 166–176. doi:10.1038/ng1165. PMID 12740579. 
  6. Segal, E.; Widom, J. (2009). "From DNA sequence to transcriptional behaviour: A quantitative approach". Nature Reviews Genetics 10 (7): 443–456. doi:10.1038/nrg2591. PMID 19506578. 
  7. Segal, E.; Taskar, B.; Gasch, A.; Friedman, N.; Koller, D. (2001). "Rich probabilistic models for gene expression". Bioinformatics 17 Suppl 1: S243–S252. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/17.suppl_1.S243. PMID 11473015. 
  8. Zeevi, David; Korem, Tal; Zmora, Niv; Israeli, David; Rothschild, Daphna; Weinberger, Adina; Ben-Yacov, Orly; Lador, Dar et al. (2015). "Personalized Nutrition by Prediction of Glycemic Responses". Cell 163 (5): 1079–1094. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2015.11.001. PMID 26590418. http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(15)01481-6. 
  9. Eran Segal (2016). What is the best diet for humans.