WHAT WE'RE INTO
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 responses as a model system. We adopt a statistical physics approach, inferring underlying microscopic processes from observed macroscopic responses, and carry out experiments in house.
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.
OUR TOOLBOX
EXPERIMENTS
We observe complex macroscopic responses of plants to diverse stimuli
STATISTICAL PHYSICS
We infer microscopic stochastic processes from macroscopic responses
MATHEMATICAL MODELING
We use minimal modeling and numerical simulations to study observations
RESEARCH AT A GLANCE
"Ask not what physics can do for biology - ask what biology can do for physics" // Ulam
 temporal integration in plantsPlants do not respond instantaneously but rather to an integrated history of stimuli. Together with L. Mahadevan and B. Moulia we are trying to understand memory process using theoretical and experimental tools. |  plant nutationsNutation is an oscillatory movement that plants display during their development. We show that this results from the alignment of the orientation of the curvature of the plant with the direction of maximal differential growth. Bastien and Meroz (2016) PLoS Comput Biol 12 |  A general 3D model for growth dynamics of sensory-growth systems: from plants to roboticsA general 3D model for rod-like organs, allowing to simulate key scenarios, e.g: responses to external stimuli such as a distant stimulus (such as sunlight and gravity), a point stimulus (a point light source), and a line stimulus which emulates twining of a climbing plant around a support. We also simulate circumnutations, the response to an internal oscillatory cue associated with search processes, as well as the superposition of internal and external cues. |
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FUNDING
FIND US
The lab is opening up this fall, looking for curious and enthusiastic students!
Britannia Building, Rooms 516+517
School of Plant Science and Food Security
Tel Aviv, Israel
email: jazz at tauex.tau.ac.il
office phone: +972-3-6409846
lab phone: +972-3-6409845
twitter: @MerozLab
solo chi non mangia non fa briciole