Nadav Kashtan

Post-Doctoral Associate
Civil and Environmental Engineering
MIT 48-208
15 Vassar St.
Cambridge, MA 02139
Phone (617) 253-253-8686
Fax: (617) 258-7009
Email: kashtan at mit.edu

Education:

2008: Ph.D. Life Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. Advisor: Uri Alon.
2003: M.Sc. Computer Science & Math, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. Advisor: Uri Alon.
1997: B.A. Computer Science, Tel-Aviv University, Israel.

Research Interests:

My current research interest is to understand the underlying principles that govern microbial oceanic ecosystems, with a focus on Prochlorococcus as a model organism.
Broadly, I'm interested in simple questions about evolution and ecology such as: what is the origin of modularity in biological systems? How can evolutionary theory explain the observed speed of evolution in nature? What determines the number of species in a given ecosystem?

Publications:

Kashtan N., Parter M., Dekel E., Mayo A.E., Alon U. 2009.
Extinctions in heterogeneous environments and the evolution of modularity.
Evolution 1558-5646.2009.00684

Kashtan N., Mayo A.E., Kalisky T., Alon U. 2009.
An analytically solvable model for rapid evolution of modular structure
PLos Comput Biol. 5(4): e1000355

Parter M., Kashtan N., Alon U., 2008.
Facilitated variation: How evolution learns from past environments to generalize to new environments.
PLos Comput Biol. 4(11): e1000206.

Kashtan N., Noor E., Alon U. 2007.
Varying environments can speed up evolution.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 104(34),13711-13716

Parter M., Kashtan N., Alon U. 2007.
Environmental variability and modularity of bacterial metabolic networks.
BMC Evol. Biol. 7,169 .

Itzkovitz S., Milo R., Kashtan N., Levitt R., Lahav A., Alon U. 2006.
Recurring Harmonic Walks and Network Motifs in Western Music.
Advances in Complex Systems, 9,121–132

Kashtan N. and Alon U. 2005,
From the Cover: Spontaneous evolution of modularity and network motifs.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 102(39),13773-13779.

Itzkovitz S., Levitt R., Kashtan N., Milo R., Itzkovitz M., Alon U. 2005.
Coarse-graining and self-dissimilarity of complex networks.
Phys Rev E 71, 016127.

Kashtan N., Itzkovitz S., Milo R., Alon U. 2004.
Efficient sampling algorithm for estimating subgraph concentrations and detecting network motifs.
Bioinformatics, 20(11):1746-58.

Yeger-Lotem E., Sattath S., Kashtan N., Itzkovitz S., Milo R., Pinter R., Alon U., Margalit H. 2004.
Network motifs in integrated cellular networks of transcription–regulation and protein–protein interaction.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 101, 5934.

Kashtan N., Itzkovitz S., Milo R., Alon U. 2004.
Topological Generalizations of network motifs.
Phys. Rev. E 70, 031909.

Milo R., Itzkovitz S., Kashtan N., Levitt R., Ayzenshtat I., Sheffer M., Alon U. 2004.
Super-families of evolved and designed networks.
Science 303, 1538-42.

Itzkovitz S., Milo R., Kashtan N., Ziv G., Alon U. 2003.
Subgraphs in random networks.
Phys Rev E 68, 026127

Milo R., Shen-Orr S., Itzkovitz S., Kashtan N., Chklovskii D., Alon U. 2002.
Network motifs: simple building blocks of complex networks.
Science 25, 298, 824-7