Our Mission

The mission of QBio at Yale is to understand how biological systems compute, and how the structure, organization, and behavior of living systems emerge from such problem-solving. The decision-making algorithms of biological systems have been molded by evolution over billions of years: this leads to function that is robust in the face of noisy components and unpredictable inputs. Using analytic tools from disciplines such as physics, mathematics, engineering and computer science together with quantitative experiments, we aim to decode these algorithms and understand how they operate over a wide range of temporal and spatial scales: from molecular, through cells and tissues, to organisms, populations and ecosystems. Our research goal is to gain insight into the logic of life, and to uncover new principles by which living matter – both natural and engineered – self organize. Our educational goal is to preserve, advance, and transmit knowledge of these insights through inspired teaching and training of undergraduates, graduate students and postdoctoral scientists.

Recent Publications by QBio Faculty

2022

Barrasso K., Chac D., Debela M.D., Geigel C., Steenhaut A., Rivera Seda A., Dunmire C.N., Harris J.B., LaRocque R.C., Midani F.S., Qadri F., Yan J., Weil A.A., Ng W.-L. (2022). Impact of a human gut microbe on Vibrio cholerae host colonization through biofilm enhancement. ELife, 11, e73010.

Gonzalez-Suarez, A. D., Zavatone-Veth, J. A., Chen, J., Matulis, C. A., Badwan, B. A., and Clark, D. A. (2022). Excitatory and inhibitory neural dynamics jointly tune motion detection. Accepted, Current Biology.

Henzel T., Nijjer J., Senthilnathan C., Wahdat H., Crosby A.J., Yan J., Cohen T. (2022). Interfacial cavitation. Under review.

Jayaram V.*, Kadakia N.*, Emonet T. (2022). Sensing complementary temporal features of odor signals enhances navigation of diverse turbulent plumes. ELife, 11, e72415. (*contributed equally)

Kadakia, N., Demir, M., Michaelis, B. T., Reidenbach, M. A., DeAngelis, B. D., Clark, D. A.*, Emonet T.* (2022). Odor motion sensing enables complex plume navigation. Accepted, Nature. (* co-corresponding authors)

Li J., Kothari M., Senthilnathan C., Henzel T., Zhang Q., Li X., Yan J., Cohen T. (2022). Nonlinear inclusion theory with application to the growth and morphogenesis of a confined body. Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, 159, 104709.

Marris J.C., Collins M.S., Huang P., Schramm C.M., Nero T., Yan J., Murray T.S. (2022). Bacterial surface detachment during nebulization with contaminated reusable home nebulizers. Microbiology Spectrum, 10, e02535-21.

Mattingly H. & Emonet T. (2022). Collective behavior and non-genetic inheritance allow bacterial populations to adapt to changing environments . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(26), e2117377119.

Tai J.-S. B., Mukherjee S., Nero T., Olson R., Tithof J., Nadell C.D., Yan J. (2022 Social evolution of shared biofilm matrix components. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119, e2123469119. Highlighted by Burroughs Welcome Fund and Yale News.

Tanaka, R. & Clark, D. A. (2022). Neural mechanisms to exploit positional geometry for collision avoidance. Current Biology 32(11): 2357-2374.

Zhang Q., Nguyen D., Tai J.-S. B., Xu X., Nijjer J., Huang X., Li Y., Yan J. (2022). Mechanical resilience of biofilms toward environmental perturbations mediated by extracellular matrix. Advanced Functional Materials, 32, 2110699.

Zhou B., Li Z., Kim, S. S. Y., Lafferty J., Clark D. A. (2022). Shallow neural networks trained to detect collisions recover features of visual loom-selective neurons. ELife, 11, e72076.