Hermona Soreq: Revolutionizing neuroscience by elucidating the roles of poly(A) tails, mRNA stability, and acetylcholine in brain-body communication throughout the lifespan

Abstract

Hermona Soreq, PhD, holds the Endowed Slesinger Professorship of Molecular Neuroscience at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is an internationally recognized molecular neuroscientist known for her research into the cholinergic system and the small RNA regulators driving the parasympathetic system in men and women under daily and acute stress responses and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases (AD, PD). Her studies have long been focused on the roles of acetylcholine in the mammalian nervous system. In the 1980s, Professor Soreq and coworkers cloned the human cholinesterase genes, identified several disease-related mutations and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that may impair their functions, and described the unusual features these mutations conferred on carriers under acute stress, exposure to anticholinesterase poisons and diverse disease conditions, including but not limited to myasthenia gravis, ischemic stroke, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, AD and PD as well as daily stress responses. Soreq further identified microRNA-132 as a principal controller of the cholinergic pathway and studied its impact as well as of other cholinergic-targeted microRNAs as regulators of parasympathetic brain and body functions and neuroinflammation. More recently, she has shifted her interest to the re-discovered transfer RNA fragments (tRFs), and showed that their rapidly declined control over cholinergic transcripts may lead to the fast cognitive deterioration of women living with AD; that they are prominently altered in PD patients’ biofluids and that their levels are sex-relatedly modified in the blood of newborn babies, dependent on pre-delivery stress. Her multi-leveled interests in the stress and sex-related cholinergic aspects of AD, PD, adult, and pre-delivery trauma further reflect the impact on acute stress responses as the kernel of the neuroscience research in the current Israeli landscape and has further enabled her a wide-angle view of diverse cholinergic-regulated states and diseases. We are delighted that Professor Soreq answered the Genomic Press Interview, generously sharing her life's trajectory with our readers.