11 Facts About Galit Lahav

Galit Lahav is an Israeli-American systems biologist and Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School.

Galit Lahav is known for discovering the pulsatile behavior of the tumor suppressor protein p53 and uncovering its significance for cell fate, and for her contributions to the culture of mentoring in science.

Galit Lahav then performed postdoctoral work in the laboratory of Uri Alon at the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Galit Lahav developed a novel system for following p53 levels and Mdm2 levels simultaneously in individual living cells and demonstrated that individual cells show discrete pulses of p53 after gamma irradiation.

In later work, Galit Lahav showed that these pulses are not an autonomous oscillation intrinsic to the p53:Mdm2 feedback loop, but are recurrently initiated by upstream signals of continuing DNA damage.

Galit Lahav then discovered that DNA damage caused by UV-irradiation results in a different p53 behavior, leading to a single pulse that increases in size and duration with increasing damage.

Galit Lahav developed a method for forcing a cell damaged by gamma irradiation to adopt the p53 dynamics seen in UV irradiation, based on precisely timed additions of the Mdm2 inhibitor Nutlin-3.

Galit Lahav found that if radiation was given shortly after addition of an Mdm2 inhibitor the treatment enhanced the effect of radiation, whereas a longer gap between the two treatments led to resistance.

Galit Lahav joined the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School in 2004.

Galit Lahav has written on the challenges of combining the role of a mother with the demands of a research career.

Galit Lahav served as Junior Faculty Liaison for Faculty Development at Harvard Medical School from 2013 to 2018.