Prof. Jun has been named the Pivot Fellow by the Simons Foundation (2025-2026). (November, 2024)
Haochen received the inaugural Lu Sham Outstanding Physics Paper Award for his paper on precision control in PRX Life, one of the most distinguished awards for a UCSD Physics graduate student! (Summer, 2024)
Fangzhou started his own lab at Westlake University, the new powerhouse in quantitative biology in China! (January, 2024)
Prof. Jun gave a "Living Histories" talk: (October, 2023)
We are most proud of and happy for Fangwei Si, who started his own lab in physics at Carnegie Mellon University! (summer, 2022)
Prof. Jun is the 2022 laureate of the Biophysical Society's Bárány award 2022! (October 4, 2021)
We welcome a new grad student, Michael Sandler, to our lab. In the era of “doom and gloom” and “goodbye academia,” Michael left his job at Google last year to explore biophysics as a graduate student!(September, 2022)
We welcome our new postdoc Fangzhou! He recently graduated from Caltech, and will conduct experiments to test his fantastic theories. (July, 2022)
Thias, a PhD student of Anders Lobner Olesen (U. Copenhagen) has arrived to do cool experiments! (March, 2022)
We have been awarded Chan Zuckeberg Initiative's napari plugin project grant. This will allow us to distribute our mother machine analyzer to a broad research community via the napari ecosystem. We will add Jupyter notebook and video tutorials. Give us max 6 months. (November, 2021)
We have multiple postdoc positions. See JOIN US below for more information.(June, 2021)
We are sad that Dongyang is leaving us after 5 years, but happy that he will be joining Michael Elowitz's lab at Caltech as a postdoc. We have been lucky that JT and Dongyang - our first two PhD students - have set a very high standard in intellect/creativity, fearlessness, and collegiality. (March, 2021)
Best wishes to Fangwei and Guillaume, who revealed the mechanistic principles of size control in bacteria. Fangwei has moved to our neighbor friend's lab, Lisa Racki at TSRI across the street. And Guillaume a little farther to Chan Zuckerberg Biohub in San Francisco as a scientist. They both will remain as close collaborators of the lab. (November, 2020)
Congratulations to Saransh Umale, who has just been selected for the Ray Thomas Edwards Award based on his excellent performance in research by the division of Biological Sciences at UCSD. Very well deserved! (September 14, 2020)
Great news for the lab: the first Ph.D from our lab, JT, has become Head of Bioengineering at the research-centric startup in Cambridge, MA, PhAST. We are really proud of JT!
We also welcome two new exceptionally strong PhD students in physics to the lab, Aaron Ren and Haochen Fu! Will update lab members page hopefully soon. (September, 2020)
JT has defended and officially become a PhD. Congratulations Dr. Sauls!
(Sept, 2019)
BREAKING NEWS: We have made our image analysis package for mother machine experiments publicly available. See
MOTHER-MACHINE IMAGE ANALYSIS on the top of our site. More information to follow in the 2nd half of 2019.
(Aug, 2019)
Welcome aboard Saransh Umale! Saransh is a PhD student in the biology graduate program at UCSD.
(May, 2019)
Welcome Tejal Agarwal as a visiting PhD student from IISER Pune (India)! Tejal will be working on chromosome organization here for six months.
(March, 2019)
Dongyang defended his PhD thesis!
(December, 2018)
We welcome new graduate student Ryan Thiermann to join the lab! We welcome Liyana Valiya Peedikakkal to come back as a postdoc!
(October, 2018)
We welcome Mikkel Svenningsen from Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark for a 3-month visit.
(February, 2018)
Our review on bacteria physiology is accepted to Reports on Progress in Physics (ROPP), check it out on our
publication page!
(January, 2018)
The lab had a road trip to San Francisco!
(December, 2017)
Our undergrad lab alumni are moving on to the next stage in their academic lives. Eden Aklile will start at Northwestern and Zulfar Ghulam-Jelani at Duke in their respective top programs. We wish them all the very best!
(August, 2017)
We now have a revamped research webpage.
(June, 2017)
Suckjoon has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. Congratulations!
(May, 2017)
We welcome our new postdoc Guillaume Le Treut, from Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA, Paris, France).
(February, 2017)
We welcome Jacopo Solari, a PhD student from AMOLF for a 3-month visiting.
(January, 2017)
Congratulations to graduating senior Amy Schwartz. She has been awarded the UCSD Physics Dept's John Holmes Malmberg Prize. Amy will enter graduate school here at UCSD in the fall.
(June, 2016)
Dr. Ashley Cadby arrived from the University of Sheffield, UK for a 6-month sabbatical with us.
(February 1, 2016)
We welcome Kazuki Yoda, a visiting undergraduate from the University of Tokyo, for a 3-month internship.
(January 19, 2016)
Many congratulations to Sattar! He will join California State University Northridge in the Fall as an Assistant Professor in Physics.
(July, 2015)
We welcome two new postdocs, Jia-Wei from Cornell and Fangwei from Johns-Hopkins. They will start in September.
(July, 2015)
Many congratulations to Yonggun Jun! After considering multiple offers, he has decided to join National Central University in Taiwan as a faculty member in biophysics in 2016. We are happy for his new chapter in life and career.
(May, 2015)
Benjamin just arrived from École Normale Supérieure (Paris, France) for 6-month internship.
(February 20, 2015)
Suckjoon has been selected as a Scialog Fellow for
Scialog: Molecules Come to Life by Research Corporation and Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation.
(July 16, 2014)
Suckjoon has been awarded a 5-year
NSF CAREER Award (MCB, $1.15M) Cell cycle and cell size control in bacteria.
(July 22, 2013)
Suckjoon has been named one of the 22 Pew Scholars.
[UCSD News] [Press Release](June 13, 2013)
Our lab alumnus (at Harvard),
James Pelletier (now at MIT), has been named a
Hertz Fellow. Congratulations!
(April 15, 2013)
Thanks to Brendan at UCSD Physics IT, the beta version of our web site is ready for public.
(November 13, 2012)
Our lab has officially moved from Harvard to UCSD. The new lab space at UCSD is currently under construction in Urey Hall 6249-6253, to be completed before next year.
(October 4, 2012)
The topology, shape and size of mitochondrial networks during the cell cycle in yeast.
Saransh Umale*, Aman Sharma*, Keaton Holton, Elena Koslover, Laura Lackner**, and Suckjoon Jun**
[in preparation]
[It is time to go beyond E. coli.] Decoupling of global metabolic flux and proteome partitioning in bacteria
Ryan Thiermann*, Jin Yang*, Taylor Rytlewski, Aniket Zodage, Farshad Abdollah-Nia, Fangzhou Xiao, John T. Sauls, Sarah Cox, Zulfar Ghulam-Jelani, Victoria Castillo, David M. Stevenson, Daniel Amador-Noguez, James R. Williamson, Jue D. Wang**, Suckjoon Jun** [in revision, 2025]
[Reaction-diffusion system for physiologists.] Robust and resource-optimal dynamic pattern formation of Min proteins in vivo
Ziyuan Ren*, Henrik Weyer*, Michael Sandler*, Laeschkir Würthner*, Haochen Fu, Chanin B. Tangtartharakul, Dongyang Li, Cindy Sou, Daniel Villarreal, Judy E. Kim, Erwin Frey**, Suckjoon Jun** [bioRxiv, 2023; provisionally accepted, 2024]
[Experimental test 1 of our PRX Life 2023 below]
Dispensability of Extrinsic DnaA Regulators in Escherichia coli Cell-Cycle Control
Thias Oberg Boesen*, Godefroid Charbon*, Haochen Fu*, Cara Jensen, Michael Sandler, Suckjoon Jun**, and Anders Lobner-Olesen** [PNAS, 2024]
Temperature Compensation through Kinetic Regulation in Biochemical Oscillators
Haochen Fu*, Chenyi Fei, Qi Ouyang, and Yuhai Tu** [PNAS, 2024]
[Our tool to analyze mother machine exps.] Tools and methods for high-throughput single-cell imaging with the mother machine
Ryan Thiermann*, Michael Sandler*, Gursharan Ahir*, John T. Sauls*, Jeremy W. Schroeder*, Steven D. Brown, Guillaume Le Treut, Fangwei Si, Dongyang Li, Jue D. Wang, Suckjoon Jun** [eLife, 2024]
[Initiator-titration model v2: theoretical solution to a 50-year old problem.]
Quantitative examination of five stochastic cell-cycle and cell-size control models for Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis
Guillaume Le Treut, Fangwei Si, Dongyang Li, and Suckjoon Jun [Frontiers in Microbiology, 2021]
Comment on ‘Initiation of chromosome replication controls both division and replication cycles in E. coli through a double-adder mechanism
Guillaume Le Treut, Fangwei Si, Dongyang Li, and Suckjoon Jun (2020) [bioRxiv] -- Updated version [bioRxiv]
[Jupyter notebook]
Control of
Bacillus subtilis Replication Initiation during Physiological Transitions and Perturbations
John T. Sauls, Sarah E. Cox, Quynh Do, Victoria Castillo, Zulfar Ghulam-Jelani and Suckjoon Jun, mBio, 10, e02205-19 (2019) [online][PDF]
[Cell-size control trilogy 3.] Mechanistic origin of cell-size control and homeostasis in bacteria
Fangwei Si, Guillaume Le Treut, John T Sauls, Stephen Vadia, Petra A. Levin and Suckjoon Jun, Current Biology, 29, 1-11 (2019) [Google Scholar][online][PDF][UCSD news]
Promoting an "Auteur Theory" for Young Scientists: Preserving Excitement and Creativity
Arshad Desai and Suckjoon Jun, BioEssays, 1800147 (2018) [PDF]
[Based on a thousand references...] Fundamental Principles in Bacterial Physiology - History, Recent progress, and the Future with Focus on Cell Size Control: A Review
Suckjoon Jun, Fangwei Si, Rami Pugatch, and Matthew Scott, Reports on Progress in Physics (2018) [Google Scholar][online][PDF][arXiv]
tCRISPRi: tunable and reversible, one-step control of gene expression
Xintian Li, Yonggun Jun, Michael J. Erickstad, Steven D. Brown, Adam Parks, Donald L. Court and Suckjoon Jun, Scientific Reports6, 39076 (2016). [Google Scholar][PDF][strain request]
Single-cell physiology
Sattar Taheri, Steven Brown, John T. Sauls, Dustin McIntosh, Suckjoon Jun, Annual Review of Biophysics, 44, 123-42 (2015). [download] [Google Scholar]
[Cell-size control trilogy 1: introducing the adder principle.] Cell size control and homeostasis in bacteria
S. Taheri-Araghi*, S. Bradde*, J. T. Sauls, N. S. Hill, P. A. Levin, J. Paulsson, M. Vergassola**, and S. Jun**, Current Biology (2014)
Cell-size maintenance: universal strategy revealed
S. Jun & S. Taheri-Araghi, Trends in Microbiology (2014) [Google Scholar][online][PDF]
[Experimental demonstration of the plastic nature of the bacterial cell walls.]
Bending forces plastically deform growing bacterial cell walls
A. Amir, F. Babaeipour, D. McIntosh, D. R. Nelson, S. Jun, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA (2014).
The bacterial chromosome: a physical biologist’s apology. A perspective.
Appeared in Small Things Considered [click] (2014).
[Link to David Goodsell’s new high-resolution E. coli illustration]
The multi-fork
Escherichia coli chromosome is a self-duplicating and self-segregating thermodynamic ring polymer
B. Youngren, H. J. Nielsen, S. Jun, and S. Austin, Genes & Development (2014).
Prof. Suckjoon Jun [email][short CV] 2004 Ph.D., Simon Fraser University, Canada 2004-2006 (NSERC) postdoc at AMOLF, Amsterdam 2006-2007 (Marie Curie) postdoc at Necker Hospital, Paris 2007-2012 (junior PI) Bauer Fellow, Harvard University 2012-present Physics, UC San Diego
Postdocs
Ryusei Yoshida [email](Biology; jointly with Sonja Albers, University of Freiburg, Germany; Ph.D. 2022, Katayama lab, Kyushu University, Japan)
