Yasmine Meroz holds a BSc in Physics and Mathematics, a MSc in Physics, and a PhD in Physical Chemistry all from Tel Aviv University. She completed a postdoc in condensed matter physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science, and then another postdoc in applied mathematics of biological systems at Harvard University. She joined the School of Plant Sciences and Food Security at Tel Aviv University in 2017. Her lab studies fundamental behavioral processes such as decision-making, collective behavior, entrainment, adaptation etc, using plant tropisms as a model system. The lab combines theory and experiment, adopting approaches from statistical physics and applied mathematics.

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DYNAMICS OF PLANT BEHAVIOUR: Organisms thrive in a harsh and fluctuating environment thanks to a variety of fundamental processes such as decision-making, adaptation, learning and collective behavior. These processes are based on the ability to compare environmental stimuli, either in time via memory, or in space by collectively sharing sensory information between organisms. Our lab aims to provide a mechanistic understanding of these phenomena, suggesting plant tropic responses as a model system. We adopt a statistical physics approach, inferring underlying microscopic processes from observed macroscopic responses, and carry out experiments. 

PHYSICS OF GROWING SYSTEMS: A variety of biological systems are not motile, but sessile in nature, relying on movement resulting from continuous growth in the direction of environmental stimuli. For example, in their search for nutrients, plant roots and fungal hyphae change their morphology by growing differentially, and neuronal axons grow towards a chemical signal. The irreversible nature of growth, together with the inherent coupling between space and time, calls for a new physical description.

1.         V. Kunik, Y. Meroz, Z. Solan, B. Sandbank, U. Weingart, E. Ruppin and D. Horn (2007) Functional Representation of Enzymes by Specific Peptides, PLoS Comput Biol 3(8): e167.

2.         Y. Meroz and D. Horn (2007) Biological Roles of Specific Peptides in Enzymes, Proteins: Struct. and Func. 72(2): 606.

3.         Y. Meroz, I. Eliazar and J. Klafter (2009) Facilitated diffusion in a Crowded Environment: From Kinetics to Stochastic, Phys. A: Math. Theor. 42 434012.

4.         Y. Meroz, I.M. Sokolov and J. Klafter (2010) Subdiffusion of Mixed Origins: When Ergodicity and Nonergodicity Coexist, Phys. Rev. E (Rapid Communication) 81, 010101.

5.         Y. Meroz, I.M. Sokolov and J. Klafter (2011) Distribution of first passage times to specific targets on compactly explored fractal structures, Phys. Rev. E (Rapid Communication) 83.

6.         Y. Meroz , I.M. Sokolov  and J. Klafter  (2011) Unequal twins: probability distributions do not determine everything, Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 260601.

7.         D. Campbell and Y. Meroz (2012) - chapter in book: The Fermi Pasta Ulam (FPU) Problem: A Path to Complexity, In: Proceedings of the International School of Physics "E. Fermi"

            Course CLXXVI, Eds. G. Stanley and F. Mallamace (IOS Press, Amsterdam)

8.         Y. Meroz, I.M. Sokolov and J. Klafter (2013) Test for determining a subdiffusive model in ergodic systems from single trajectories, Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 090601.

9.         Y. Meroz, Y. Oreg and Y. Imry (2014) Memory effects in the electron glass, EPL 105(3)

            * chosen for EPL Highlights of 2014

10.       Y. Meroz and R. Bastien (2014) Stochastic processes in gravitropism, Frontiers in Plant Science, 5, 00674.

11.     S.D. Ha, J. Shi, Y. Meroz, L. Mahadevan and S. Ramanthan (2014) Neuromimetic circuits with synaptic devices based on strongly correlated electron systems. Phys. Rev. Applied 2, 064003.

          * selected for Editor’s Suggestion, and for Physics magazine synopsis.

12.     Y. Meroz, I.M. Sokolov (2015) A toolbox for determining subdiffusive mechanisms Physics Reports, 573(6), 1-29

13.     Y. Meroz (2015) Beyond experimental noise: analyzing single-molecule data of  heterogeneous systems. Comment on “Extracting physics of life at the molecular level: A review of single-molecule data analyses” by W. Colomb and S.K. Sarkar,

          Physics of Life Reviews, 13, 146-7.

14.     A. Taloni, Y. Meroz and A. Huerta (2015) Collisional Statistics and Dynamics of 2D Hard-Disk Systems: From Fluid to Solid, Phys. Rev. E, 92 (2), 022131

15.     H.V. Prentice-Mott*, Y. Meroz*, A. Carlson, M.A. Levine, M.W. Davidson, D. Irmia, G. Charras, L. Mahadevan and J.V. Shah (2015)

          (* equal contribution) Directional memory arises from long-lived cytoskeletal asymmetries in polarized chemotactic cells PNAS, 113(5), 1267-1272.

16.     R. Bastien and Y. Meroz (2016) The Kinematics of Plant Nutation Reveals a Simple     Relation between Curvature and the Orientation of Differential Growth, PLoS Comput Biol 12(12), e1005238.

17.     Y. Meroz, V. Ovchinnikov, M. Karplus (2017) Coexisting Origins of Subdiffusion in Internal Dynamics of Proteins, Phys. Rev. E. 95, 062403

18.     Y. Meroz and B.J. Meade (2017) Intermittent Granular Dynamics at a Seismogenic Plate Boundary, Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 138501

19.     K. Y. Lee, S.-J. Park, K. A. Lee, S.-H. Kim, H. Kim, Y. Meroz, L. Mahadevan, K.-H. Jung, T. K. Ahn, K. K. Parker and K. Shin (2018) Photosynthetic artificial organelles sustain and control ATP-dependent reactions in a protocellular system,

          Nature Biotechnology,  36, 530–535

20.     S. Wexler, H. Schayek, K. Rajendar, I. Tal, E. Shani, Y. Meroz, R. Dobrovetsky and R. Weinstain (2018) Characterizing gibberellin flow in planta using photocaged gibberellins, Chemical Science (advanced publication)

21.     Y. Meroz, R. Bastien and L. Mahadevan (2019) Spatio-temporal integration in plant tropisms, Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 16

22.     R. Bastien*, A. Porat* and Y. Meroz (2019) Towards a framework for collective behavior in growth-driven systems, based on plant-inspired allotropic pairwise interactions, Bioinspir. Biomim, 14 (5), 055004

23.     E. Chetrit, Y. Meroz, Z. Klausner and R. Berkovich (2020) Correlations within polyprotein forced unfolding dwell-times introduces sequential dependency, Journal of Structural Biology (in print)