Cell growth requires cells to solve two related quantitative problems: they must adjust biomass production to support different growth rates, while also scaling biosynthesis with cell size to maintain approximately constant intracellular concentrations. Using budding yeast as a model, we combine single-molecule microscopy, quantitative transcriptomics and proteomics, genetic perturbations, and kinetic modeling to investigate the physical principles underlying these processes. Our results show how several fundamental features of cellular growth can emerge from simple physical principles—limiting molecular resources, mass-action interactions, and feedback regulation—that connect cell size, molecular concentrations, and growth rate.
Jan Skotheim - Scaling laws and molecular mechanisms of eukaryotic cell growth
Jan Skotheim is Professor of Biology at Stanford University and Professor, by courtesy, of Chemical and Systems Biology. His research focuses on understanding how cells grow and how cell growth triggers cell division, a fundamental process with important implications for normal physiology and diseases such as cancer.
Skotheim leads an interdisciplinary research program that combines mathematics, physics, engineering, biochemistry, genetics, and cell and systems biology. His laboratory primarily studies cell-size control and the cell cycle using budding yeast as a model organism, with the goal of uncovering the molecular mechanisms that connect cellular growth to division.
He did his PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Cambridge in 2004. He subsequently conducted postdoctoral research in genetics, cell biology, and systems biology at The Rockefeller University before joining Stanford’s faculty.
Published Sep. 4, 2026 11:08 AM
- Last modified Sep. 4, 2026 11:08 AM