Jan Skotheim

Jan M. Skotheim is currently an assistant professor of the Biology Department of Stanford University with a special appointment in Chemical and Systems Biology. His research specializes in cell cycle regulation of Saccharomyces cerevisiae with an emphasis on mathematical modeling. His lab is currently located in the Lokey Laboratories building on the Stanford University main campus.
Educational Background
Skotheim graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1999 with degrees in Physics and Mathematics. He followed this feat with Masters and Doctoral degrees in Applied Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. He performed his postdoctoral research at Rockefeller University under the guidance of Dr. Frederick Cross and Dr. Eric Siggia by combining the topics of molecular yeast genetics and theoretical condensed matter physics.
Research Interests
Skotheim is involved with research regarding the cell cycle and its protein regulators, such as Cdk1. He has heavily contributed to the understanding of the role positive feedback in the entry into various stages of the cell cycle.
He is interested in all aspects of cell cycle control. Two key questions facing his laboratory include: 1) How do cells compute their own size? 2) Are systems-level properties, such as transcriptional feedback circuits, conserved throughout eukaryotes?
In addition, Skotheim is starting a project on the evolution of cell size in collaboration with Jonathan Payne from the Stanford Department of Geosciences. They hope to determine the extent to which evolution of body size observed in the fossil record can be explained through variation in Earth’s atmospheric oxygen content.
Teaching
Skotheim currently teaches the following courses at Stanford University:
Principles of Cell Cycle Control: Bio171/271, CSB 271
Frontiers in Biology: Bio 301
Representative Publications
S DiTalia, H Wang, JM Skotheim, A Rosebrock, B Futcher & FR Cross. "Daughter-specific transcription factors regulate cell size control in budding yeast". PLoS Biology 7(10): e1000221 (2009).
Skothiem, JM. "To divide or not to divide". Science 324: 476-7 (2009)
Skotheim JM, Di Talia S, Siggia ED, Cross FR. "Positive feedback of G1 cyclins ensures coherent cell cycle entry". Nature 454 (7202): 291-6 (2008).
S DiTalia, JM Skotheim, JM Bean, ED Siggia & FR Cross. "The effects of molecular noise and size control on variability in the budding yeast cell cycle". Nature 448: 947-951 (2007).

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