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The article examines changes in the relationship between film and religion in contemporary Israeli cinema by looking at three films that exemplify these changes, Ushpizin (2003) by Shuli Rand and Gidi Dar, The Wedding Plan (2016) by Rama Burshtein and Tikkun (2015), by Avishai Sivan. As a pioneering religious film, Ushpizin introduced two cinematic elements that were developed by subsequent Israeli films that deal with religion or faith. The first element draws its inspiration from the romantic comedy genre and is visible in The Wedding Plan, a romantic comedy that demonstrates the partiality of Israeli religious cinema to a genre that has been marginal in local cinema until recently. The second element explores the power of cinema to convey transcendent, spiritual or meditative sensibilities in the film Tikkun, an arthouse film that begins to articulate a new cinematic vocabulary of Jewish religious sensibilities.

The article consider's Ronit Matalon's last novel, And the Bride Closed the Door, as a romantic love story in the modern sense of the English word, a rare genre in modern Hebrew literature. Erotic love stories were rarely written by modern Hebrew authors, who preferred to write on more symbolic kinds of love for the Hebrew language, the Jewish community or the Land of Israel. In her last novel, Matalon writes an erotic love story between two young people, a man and a women. However, even this contemporary love story has greater symbolism as a love story also between different sections of Israeli national society, whom the novel forces to reconcile and leave in relative peace and harmony. As such, Matalon's work joins other works of fiction in Hebrew, which react to the dissolution of Israeli civil society by suggesting a more inclusive national vision.

From the beginning of its history, the Zionist workers’ society in the Land of Israel was plagued with fundamental identity problems. Chief among them was the tension between the socialist vision of Zionist ideologues and their wish to cast that socialism in a national Jewish mold as well. The blurry lines between socialist ideology and national identity became progressively more apparent as the country matured and developed, especially after the neo-liberalization of Israel since the 1990s. One of the most problematic legacies of this tension is the persistent socio-economic differences between two groups of Israelis, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi, which are often cast in ethnic terms. This article looks at cinematic articulations of this tension and examines the tendency of Israeli culture, which is reflected in films, to relate to the gaps between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim as folklore rather than as a social and economic problem. In doing so, many filmmakers in Israel fail to use their art for promoting social and political change, as many of them try to do, for instance, with respect to the conflict with the Palestinians. The article describes this phenomenon, examines its nature and focuses on the social cinema of writer, director and social activist, Doron Tzabari, as a notable exception to this dynamic.

Escherichia coli (E. coli) remains the most commonly used host for recombinant protein expression. It is well known that a variety of experimental factors influence the protein production level as well as the solubility profile of over-expressed proteins. This becomes increasingly important for optimizing production of protein complexes using co-expression strategies. In this study, we focus on the effect of the choice of the expression vector system: by standardizing experimental factors including bacterial strain, cultivation temperature and growth medium composition, we compare the effectiveness of expression technologies used by the partners of the Structural Proteomics in Europe 2 (SPINE2-complexes) consortium. Four different protein complexes, including three binary and one ternary complex, all known to be produced in the soluble form in E. coli, are used as the benchmark targets. The respective genes were cloned by each partner into their preferred set of vectors. The resulting constructs were then used for comparative co-expression analysis done in parallel and under identical conditions at a single site. Our data show that multiple strategies can be applied for the expression of protein complexes in high yield. While there is no ‘silver bullet’ approach that was infallible even for this small test set, our observations are useful as a guideline to delineate co-expression strategies for particular protein complexes.

Agrobacterium tumefaciens infects plant cells by the transfer of DNA. A key factor in this process is the bacterial virulence protein VirE2, which associates stoichiometrically with the transported single-stranded (ss) DNA molecule (T-strand). As observed in vitro by transmission electron microscopy, VirE2-ssDNA readily forms an extended helical complex with a structure well suited to the tasks of DNA protection and nuclear import. Here we have elucidated the role of the specific molecular chaperone VirE1 in regulating VireE2-VirE2 and VirE2-ssDNA interactions. VirE2 alone formed functional filamentous aggregates capable of ssDNA binding. In contrast, co-expression with VirE1 yielded monodisperse VirE1-VirE2 complexes. Cooperative binding of VirE2 to ssDNA released VirE1, resulting in a controlled formation mechanism for the helical complex that is further promoted by macromolecular crowding. Based on this in vitro evidence, we suggest that the constrained volume of the VirB channel provides a natural site for the exchange of VirE2 binding from VirE1 to the T-strand.

The production of sufficient quantities of protein is an essential prelude to a structure determination, but for many viral and human proteins this cannot be achieved using prokaryotic expression systems. Groups in the Structural Proteomics In Europe (SPINE) consortium have developed and implemented high-throughput (HTP) methodologies for cloning, expression screening and protein production in eukaryotic systems. Studies focused on three systems: yeast (Pichia pastoris and Saccharomyces cerevisiae), baculovirus-infected insect cells and transient expression in mammalian cells. Suitable vectors for HTP cloning are described and results from their use in expression screening and protein-production pipelines are reported. Strategies for co-expression, selenomethionine labelling (in all three eukaryotic systems) and control of glycosylation (for secreted proteins in mammalian cells) are assessed. © International Union of Crystallography, 2006.