Shen Lab
Principal Investigator: Yihui Shen
Institution: University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA)
Primary Subfield: Synthetic Bio
Recruitment Status: ✅ Accepting PhD Students ✅ Hiring Postdocs
Research Focus
PROJECT SUMMARY Metabolism represents one of the most evolutionarily constrained cellular network, yet understanding how cells coordinate thousands of metabolic reactions to achieve specific biological functions remains a central challenge in biology. Proliferation is such a function where divergent choices are made to achieve similar goals. The role of a gene in supporting proliferation could vary across different cell types, different nutrient availability, two- vs three- dimensional growth, different tissue microenvironment. Can we predict and understand divergent metabolic dependency from unique cellular context? The plasticity and complexity of metabolic network present unique challenges to address the question above. Firstly, the mammalian cell metabolism encodes multiple layers of redundancy to ensure robustness. Predicting metabolic dependency requires an accurate biochemical network and reflect contexts including cell expression and nutrient availability. Secondly, metabolic network is highly interconnected through shared substrates, products, and cofactors. The multi-tasking nature of central metabolites gives rise to gene network modules that are still incompletely under…
Active NIH Awards
- 1R35GM166382-01: Systems biology approach for understanding metabolic support of diversity in proliferating cells (2026)
- 1R21DE036022-01: High-resolution metabolic imaging of HPV+ head and neck tumors ex vivo (2026)
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