Gurevich Lab

Education

2004-2009  PhD. Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Israel.
Dissertation: “Striatin – A novel APC binding Protein”
Advisor: Dr. Rina Rosin-Arbesfeld.
1996-1999   M.Sc. Faculty of Health Sciences, the Department of Microbiology
and Immunology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel.
Dissertation:  “Characterization and Activity of DNA Topoisomerases in
Human Spermatozoa”
Advisors: Prof. Ester Priel and Prof. Gad Potashnik.
1993-1996   B.Sc. Faculty of Natural Sciences, the Department of Life Sciences.
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel.

Research Description

Maya worked in the lab 2010-2011

In August 2011 Maya moved with her husband to Johnson City, TN.

She was focusing on the molecular mechanism of arrestin interaction with pro-apoptotic MAP kinase JNK3 using energy transfer-based methods in living cells. She was also trying to figure out how arrestin conformation and sub-cellular localization affect its ability to promote MAPK activation. The ultimate goal of these studies is to enable us to design arrestins that go to a particular cellular compartment and channel the signaling towards pro-apoptotic or pro-survival pathways in the cell.

Maya developed arrestin-3 mutant that acts as a dominant-negative silent scaffold: recruits the kinases of ASK1-MKK4-JNK3 pathway but does not facilitate JNK3 activation, thereby suppressing JNK3 signaling in the cell.

Maya published four papers form the lab:

Breitman, M., Kook, S., Gimenez, L.E., Lizama, B.N., Palazzo, M.C., Gurevich, E.V., Gurevich, V.V. Silent scaffolds: inhibition of c-Jun N-terminal kinase 3 activity in the cell by a dominant-negative arrestin-3 mutant. J Biol Chem 287, 19653-19664 (2012).

Coffa, S., Breitman, M., Hanson, S.M., Callaway, K., Kook, S., Dalby, K.N., Gurevich, V.V. The effect of arrestin conformation on the recruitment of C-Raf1, MEK1, and ERK1/2 activation. PLoS One 6(12), e28723 (2011).

Seo, J., Tsakem, E.L., Breitman, M., and Gurevich, V.V. Identification of arrestin-3-specific residues necessary for JNK3 activation. J Biol Chem 286, 27894-27901 (2011).

Coffa, S., Bretman, M., Spiller, B.W., and Gurevich, V.V. A single mutation in arrestin-2 prevents ERK1/2 activation by reducing c-Raf1 binding. Biochemistry 50, 6951-6958 (2011).