John Yin

Title: Professor, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Theme Leader-Systems Biology WID
Office: University of Wisconin-Madison

From Genome to Organism: a Virus-World View

Abstract: The genome of every organism defines a molecular manufacturing process, and viruses are no exception. In the right environment inside a live host cell the release of a genome from an invading virus can take command, directing material and energy resources of the cell toward the synthesis of components that are essential for virus growth: mRNA, proteins, and viral genomes. Assembly of these and other components yields progeny virus particles that, upon release by the cell, may then infect other susceptible cells. By performing quantitative experiments and building mathematical models of these processes we begin to link mechanistically how genomic information processing in limited host-resource environments can impact virus growth and infection spread. By providing a quantitative, mechanistic and integrative viewpoint, such models will serve as a foundation to engineer optimal strategies to exploit or control the potentially explosive growth and spread of virus infections.

John Yin, the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, and Theme Leader of Systems Biology at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (UW-Madison), earned an A.B. in liberal arts and B.S in chemical engineering from Columbia University, while pursing cello studies at Juilliard School with a teacher of Yo-Yo Ma; his piano studies at Columbia led to an invitational performance of the Schumann Concerto with the university orchestra. As an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow he pursued a post-doc with Nobel laureate Manfred Eigen at the Max-Planck-Institut für biophysikalische Chemie, where he pursued extensive studies of the institute Steinway. Yin shares Ed Lightfoot's passion for popular science books, and they sparred over "What is Life?," by Addy Pross, with Yin and Ed respectively > and < 0. Yin plays a 1918 Andre Bernard cello, he earned a 1725 rating at the US Table Tennis Association Open in Las Vegas, and he is a recent convert to sous vide quantitative cooking.