Even as Dean, he continued his research on the higher cerebral functions.19 Halpern died of repeated heart attacks while in office, in 1968. Halpern was succeeded as head of the Department of Neurology by his pupil, Professor Shaul Feldman, who later served as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine as well. This tradition of clinical and scientific excellence combined with public service was carried on by Feldman’s pupil, Professor Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical Oded Abramsky, who also filled these two positions. Halpern is survived by his daughter Rachel Halpern-Feinsod, MD. Footnotes

Conflict of interest: No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.
The presence of micro-organisms in our environment and their significance Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical in human health and disease have been known for centuries.

In 1675, using his handcrafted microscope, Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) first observed single-celled organisms. After 150 years, the animalcules, as he called them, became known as micro-organisms.1 Later pioneers, Pasteur (1822–1895), Cohn (1828–1898), and Koch (1843–1910), the “fathers of modern microbiology”, further established the complexity of the microbial world. Initially, micro-organisms were studied by cultivation on nutrient-rich plates. Although yielding Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical important information, this approach does not allow analysis of species that cannot be cultured in the Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical laboratory. Environmental and marine microbiology studies suggest that only about 1% of

the diverse microbial world can be cultivated using traditional methods, a phenomenon known as the “the great plate count anomaly.”2 Recently developed molecular microbiology techniques have enabled culture-independent analysis of complex microbial communities in the human body. Selleck GSK3 inhibitor During the last two decades, examination of micro-organisms at the molecular level, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical using rapid, cost-effective DNA-sequencing technology, set the foundation of modern microbiomics. This approach allows genetic identification of individual micro-organisms in a complex community but also offers a glance into the (-)-p-Bromotetramisole Oxalate fascinating world of microbial genetics, or metagenomics when including the host genome. In 1995, the first complete genome of a free-living micro-organism, Haemophilus influenzae was sequenced.3 By 2007, more than 1,000 genes of cultivation-resistant micro-organisms were sequenced.4 Today, microbial genomics study tools enable the sequencing of a bacterial chromosome composed of 4,000,000 base pairs in just one day.5 Microbial genomics studies can provide insights into bacterial population structure, phylogenetic evolutionary history, growth requirements, protein expression, and associated immune responses.