Education:

2007-2011 B.S. in Physics, Fudan University

2011-2016, Ph.D. in Physics, New York University

Academic Experience:

2016-2020 Postdoc, Harvard University

Research interests: 

Keywords: theoretical biological physics, soft matter physics, gene expression, cell physiology, and cell size regulation

My main research field is theoretical biological physics, and I aim to understand complex biological systems using the language of physics. I am mostly interested in phenomena that are widely observed across various species. Current research interests include mathematical modeling of gene expression, soft living matter, and microbial physiology.

My research goal is to find unifying models that can quantitatively reproduce experimental observations and, in the meantime, make nontrivial predictions that can be experimentally tested. To achieve this goal, the most challenging step is often to find an appropriate mathematical model that captures the essential ingredients of the system under study and neglects those irrelevant details. In condensed matter physics, the essential variables are usually easy to identify as systems are mostly homogeneous. However, biological systems are generally much more complex and heterogeneous (think about a eukaryotic cell that consists of various organelles and biomolecules), therefore identifying the essential variables may not be straightforward and often requires some physical intuitions. For physicists, this is probably the most exciting part of biological physics.

Selected Publications:

16. Heterogeneous elasticity drives ripening and controls bursting kinetics of transcriptional condensates

      Lingyu Meng, Sheng Mao, Jie Lin

      Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 121 (12), e2316610121, 2024

15. Fingering instability accelerates population growth of a proliferating cell collective

      Yiyang Ye, Jie Lin

      Physical Review Letters, 132, 018402, 2024

14. Diffusion enhancement in bacterial cytoplasm through an active random force

      Lingyu Meng, Yiteng Jin, Yichao Guan, Jiayi Xu, Jie Lin

      Physical Review Research, 5, L032018, 2023

13. Implications of differential size-scaling of cell-cycle regulators on cell size homeostasis

      Xiangrui Ji, Jie Lin

      PLOS Computational Biology, 19, 1-24, 2023

12. Cell Size: Putting scaling laws on a physical foundation

      Yiyang Ye, Jie Lin

      eLife, 12, e89415, 2023

11. Indissoluble biomolecular condensates via elasticity

      Lingyu Meng, Jie Lin

      Physical Review Research, 5, L012024, 2023

10. Environment-specificity and universality of the microbial growth law

      Qirun Wang, Jie Lin

      Communications Biology, 5, 891, 2022

9. Modeling the aging of protein condensates

      Jie Lin

      Physical Review Research, 4, L022012, 2022

8. Coupling between DNA replication, segregation, and the onset of constriction in Escherichia coli

      Sriram Tiruvadi-Krishnan, Jaana Männik, Prathitha Kar, Jie Lin, Ariel Amir, Jaan Männik

      Cell Reports, 38, 110539, 2022

7. Heterogeneous recruitment abilities to RNA polymerases generate nonlinear scaling of gene expression with cell volume

      Qirun Wang, Jie Lin

      Nature Communications, 12, 6852, 2021

6. Disentangling intrinsic and extrinsic gene expression noise in growing cells

      Jie Lin, Ariel Amir

      Physical Review Letters, 126, 078101, 2021

5. Evolution of microbial growth traits under serial dilution

      Jie Lin, Michal Manhart, Ariel Amir

      Genetics, 215, 767-777, 2020

4.  Optimal segregation of proteins: phase transitions and symmetry breaking

     Jie Lin, Jiseon Min, Ariel Amir

     Physical Review Letters, 122, 068101, 2019

3.  Homeostasis of protein and mRNA concentrations in growing cells

     Jie Lin, Ariel Amir

     Nature Communications, 9, 4496, 2018

2.  Modeling cell size regulation: From single-cell level statistics to molecular mechanisms and population-level effects

     Po-Yi Ho, Jie Lin, Ariel Amir,

     Annual Review of Biophysics, 47, 2018

1.  The effects of stochasticity at the single-cell level and cell size control on the population growth

     Jie Lin, Ariel Amir

     Cell Systems, 5(4):358-367, 2017