Shuyuan Zhang
Ohio State University, OH·Biology·Early-career
How does a cell know when it is big enough to divide, and how fast should it grow? Cell growth and cell division are tightly linked, and together they set a basic property of every cell: its size.
- Fields
Biology
Biochemistry
- Topics
cell growth
cell size control
cell cycle
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2028
What they work on
- Define the molecular mechanisms that control the concentration of RB, a cell cycle inhibitor, as the cell cycle progresses, explaining how cell growth triggers division in mammalian cells.
- Determine how global protein synthesis is regulated during cell cycle progression, including why protein synthesis efficiency increases at the G1/S transition.
- Identify how cell size feeds back to regulate growth rate by uncovering why protein synthesis efficiency drops as cells grow larger within each cell cycle phase.
More about the research
Getting this coordination right matters for keeping tissues healthy and for regeneration after injury. When it fails, it can contribute to cancer. The molecular links between growth and division remain largely unknown.
Why it matters
Abnormal cell growth underlies both cancer and the failure of damaged tissues to regenerate. Identifying the mechanisms that tie protein production to cell size and cell cycle stage in mammalian cells could deepen understanding of these conditions. It could also eventually inform how tumor growth and tissue repair are studied.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Sabrina Spencer
University of Colorado Boulder, CO·Biochemistry
Test whether p16, a protein that naturally blocks the kinases CDK4 and CDK6, controls the rebound of CDK2 activity seen in single cells hours after CDK2 inhibition, using time-lapse microscopy of living cells.
Bryce LaFoya
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Biology·Early-career
Screen neural stem cells in Drosophila and zebrafish for proliferation regulators that become polarized, or concentrated on one side, in the mother cell before asymmetric division, using live imaging of developing brains.
The school
Ohio State University: 71 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 882 research doctorates a year.
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