IIBR | Israel
Dr. Meital Charni-Natan is an accomplished molecular biologist whose research focuses on the transcriptional and metabolic regulation of liver function under nutritional and hormonal cues. She earned her B.Sc. in Life Sciences from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev with high honors, followed by an M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Life Sciences from the Weizmann Institute of Science, where she investigated the roles of p53 signaling and its non-cell-autonomous functions in liver metabolism under the supervision of Prof. Varda Rotter. She later completed a postdoctoral fellowship at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem under Dr. Ido Goldstein, exploring transcriptional responses to fasting, refeeding, and metabolic adaptation in hepatocytes. Dr. Charni-Natan currently serves as a Researcher at the Israel Institute for Biological Research, Department of Pharmacology, where her work integrates genomic, epigenetic, and metabolic profiling to uncover regulatory mechanisms governing hepatic physiology and disease. Her contributions have been recognized with several awards, including the Golda Meir Excellence Fellowship and the First Place Poster Award at the 19th Medical Chemical Defense Conference (2025). Through her pioneering research, Dr. Charni-Natan continues to advance understanding of metabolic gene regulation and its implications for liver health and systemic homeostasis.
Featured Publications
Korenfeld, N., Gorbonos, T., Romero Florian, M.C., Rotaro, D., Goldberg, D., Radushkevitz-Frishman, T., Charni-Natan, M., Bar-Shimon, M., Cummins, C.L., & Goldstein, I. (2024). “LXR-dependent enhancer activation regulates the temporal organization of the liver’s response to refeeding leading to lipogenic gene overshoot.” PLoS Biology
Goldberg, D., Buchshtab, N., Charni-Natan, M., & Goldstein, I. (2024). “Transcriptional cascades during fasting amplify gluconeogenesis and instigate a secondary wave of ketogenic gene transcription.” Liver International
Korenfeld, N., Charni-Natan, M., Bruse, J., Goldberg, D., Marciano-Anaki, D., Rotaro, D., Gorbonos, T., Radushkevitz-Frishman, T., Polizzi, A., Nasereddin, A., et al. (2024). “Repeated fasting events sensitize enhancers, transcription factor activity and gene expression to support augmented ketogenesis.” bioRxiv [Preprint].
Korenfeld, N., Toft, N.I., Dam, T.V., Charni-Natan, M., Grøntved, L., & Goldstein, I. (2023). “Protocol for bulk and single-nuclei chromatin accessibility quantification in mouse liver tissue.” STAR Protocols
Radushkevitz-Frishman, T., Charni-Natan, M., & Goldstein, I. (2023). “Dynamic chromatin accessibility during nutritional iron overload reveals a BMP6-independent induction of cell cycle genes.” The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry, 115
Goldberg, D., Charni-Natan, M., Buchshtab, N., Bar-Shimon, M., & Goldstein, I. (2022). “Hormone-controlled cooperative binding of transcription factors drives synergistic induction of fasting-regulated genes.” Nucleic Acids Research
Korenfeld, N., Finkel, M., Buchshtab, N., Bar-Shimon, M., Charni-Natan, M., & Goldstein, I. (2021). “Fasting hormones synergistically induce amino acid catabolism genes to promote gluconeogenesis.” Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology and Hepatology