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Maor Knafo

@maorknak.bsky.social

Postdoc at Ziv Reich's lab, Weizmann Institute of Science. Studying phenotypic variability and biological learning. MaorKnafo.com

108 Followers  |  149 Following  |  38 Posts  |  Joined: 10.09.2023  |  2.0995

Latest posts by maorknak.bsky.social on Bluesky

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GitHub - maorkn/CRISPR_HUNTER: scripts for genric crispr desgin scripts for genric crispr desgin. Contribute to maorkn/CRISPR_HUNTER development by creating an account on GitHub.

This is the pipeline I've built and use to find crispr targets on weird organisms, if anyone is looking for one:
github.com/maorkn/CRISP...

11.11.2025 16:23 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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Memories all the way down. β€” Maor Knafo - System Biology Could memories be an emergent cellular property ? The 60s were a weird time, and no one was weirder than a group of scientists studying the transfer of memories via cannibalism in flatworms. Flatworm...

The 60s were a weird time, and no one was weirder than a group of scientists studying the transfer of memories via cannibalism in flatworms.

A new blog post in praise of cellular learning!

www.maorknafo.com/reducible-be...

12.03.2025 21:19 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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Laplace and All His Demons. β€” Maor Knafo - System Biology The evening deepened. The games were played, the food was eaten, and the events moved along their planned course, drawn by invisible threads, traveling along hewn tracks. Noah rubbed his eyes sleepil...

Wrote a short story
www.maorknafo.com/reducible-be...

03.03.2025 12:43 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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This is an image that has haunted me since I was a child because it captures something truly inherent to the human experience. We can get used to anything. A new blog post about habituationβ€”it's been a while, needed to get un-used to a few things. maorknafo.com/reducible-beau…πŸ§ͺ

18.02.2025 21:38 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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Waddington's landscape contamination in the lab today!
πŸ„πŸ“·πŸ§ͺ

17.06.2024 15:34 β€” πŸ‘ 12    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

As always, my unbelievably talented partner
@ShiraHoland
had the punishing job of integrating all of this information into the beautiful figures you see here. Hope you like it! biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 13/13
πŸ§ͺπŸ„

12.12.2023 12:57 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

This paper has been a long time coming and required a lot of thought and work by everyone in the
@ZivReichLab, especially @rutikapon.bsky.social @reinatnevo
@SRezenman
and Ivgeni Tsigalnitski. 12/13

12.12.2023 12:56 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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Stress seldom encountered does not require such a network and its costly upkeep, so strategies such as #bethedging are sufficient and could be refined upon recurring exposures. 11/13

12.12.2023 12:55 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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We think then that #creativity in response or stress-induced variability could arise when cells have a robust, redundant network of responses, allowing multiple adaptive avenues to be explored and explored. 10/13

12.12.2023 12:55 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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Our hypothetical model of what is going on is quite counterintuitive. NaCl, as it is a very exotic stress, has a minimal proteomic response attributed to it, while pH is an integral part of the yeast way of life. 9/13

12.12.2023 12:55 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

A similar picture was conveyed. pH stress, which elicits a high proteomic response, also has high diversity after the onset of stress. In contrast, NaCl stress has minimal variability in proteomic response and maintains the same level of diversity under stress. 8/13

12.12.2023 12:54 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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We wanted to probe this phenomenon deeper, so we utilized our #gUMIBEAR barcoding and tracking method to see the population's lineage dynamics at high temporal resolution. 7/13

12.12.2023 12:53 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

We saw something quite striking. Not all stresses are the same. For the same morality level, #ShannonEntropy behaved differently, indicating that some stresses, not others, induced the population variability. 6/13

12.12.2023 12:53 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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But rather multimodal distributions, exemplifying what we think are multi-state phenotypes. We used #ShannonEntropy to portray these populations accurately and plotted them against the stress in various insult levels. 5/13

12.12.2023 12:53 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Once we had multiple stresses measured on our newly constructed library, we noticed something interesting. Distributions were not what you would expect from noisy populations when stress was administered, 4/13

12.12.2023 12:52 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Stress is not a binomial phenomenon, i.e., it's not only an on-or-off thing but a much more nuanced experience. Testing multiple levels of each perturbation, ranging from mild to lethal, allows us to describe the relationship between the magnitude of stress and variability. 3/13

12.12.2023 12:52 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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Many works have described the function of #noise and its relationship to #stress, but we wanted to quantify this relationship in a way that has yet to be widely measured. This required many levels of stressful perturbations. 2/13

12.12.2023 12:52 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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A new #preprint! Variability is strange, right? Especially when it arises in the background of an identical genetic background. Why would cells, having the same machinery, regulation, and environment, behave differently? Why would there be #noise? 1/13 rb.gy/45y36m

12.12.2023 12:51 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 1

Right???

06.10.2023 09:50 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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Terrarium going a bit crazy these past weeks. Constantly changing. πŸ„πŸ“·

06.10.2023 08:21 β€” πŸ‘ 21    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 1
ganoderma sp fungi growing on a dead tree stump.

ganoderma sp fungi growing on a dead tree stump.

ganoderma sp.? πŸ§ͺπŸ„πŸ“·
"What an organism feeds upon is negative entropy. Or, to put it less paradoxically, the essential thing in metabolism is that the organism succeeds in freeing itself from all the entropy it cannot help producing while alive"

Erwin SchrΓΆdinger, What is Life?

28.09.2023 15:30 β€” πŸ‘ 10    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 1
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Guys, guys, am I just seeing things or is this a budding yeast cell???
Great song BTW πŸ§ͺπŸ„

22.09.2023 16:27 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

It's about how a cell (yeast), when faced with an unresolved stress, can utilize something similar to reinforcement learning to repurpose old, redundant functions for new stress-alleviating ones. ☺️

19.09.2023 15:01 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Mine is kinda long... But beautiful.

19.09.2023 13:10 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 1
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Starting to look like autumn (finally). False parasol? πŸ§ͺπŸ„

19.09.2023 13:02 β€” πŸ‘ 5    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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The Art of Destruction (and the destruction of art). β€” Maor Knafo - System Biology One night in 2001, William Basinski sat on the rooftop of his apartment building in New York. I can only assume he was pretty tired. He had spent the whole night working on a project and was resting...

The Art of Destruction (and the destruction of art).
www.maorknafo.com/reducible-be...

14.09.2023 16:50 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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This village has a secret that almost everybody knows. β€” Maor Knafo - System Biology And suddenly, the sound of a horn. The horn hadn't been in years. Maybe ever, but everyone intuitively knew its purpose. They were to stop whatever they were doing and march to the village center to...

This village has a secret that almost everybody knows.
www.maorknafo.com/reducible-be...

14.09.2023 16:48 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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πŸ§ͺπŸ§ͺNew blog post!
How (and why) do organisms optimize tasks, and why are they flat about it? The use of Mutual Information in Pareto fronts and slimy aliens.πŸŒŒπŸ‘ΎπŸ“Š
maorknafo.com/reducible-beau…
In the comments, I'll link to the previous posts, which I think are helpful (and coolπŸ˜†).

14.09.2023 16:46 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0

I sometimes think about hiding an Amazon gift card in there just to see if someone, anyone, reads them for real.

13.09.2023 17:20 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Still new to this :-) #microbiome

13.09.2023 07:48 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

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