ELBE postdocral fellow at CSBD/MPI-PKS/MPI-CBG Joining Fudan University as Assistant Professor in 2027
Dresden
Joined January 2021
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We call the region between floor and ceiling the thermodynamic space, and steady states for random rates always fall inside it. At equilibrium floor and ceiling meet, and driving widens the space. Switches, symmetry breaking and patterns need it to have some width.
The bounds also work in reverse. If a measured steady state lies outside the thermodynamic space of a proposed network, no rates can produce it, so a reaction is missing. Here, adding one assembly step, 2B ⇌ C, doubles the ceiling on dimer amplification from Δμ/RT to 2Δμ/RT.
The paper is open access at doi.org/10.1103/g875-ldn5
Our code for computing these bounds on your own network is at github.com/Shiling42/TACOS
Thanks to Paolo and Daniel. The work was done at MPI-PKS, MPI-CBG and CSBD in Dresden, @EPFL_en and @UniPadova.
Living systems run on an energy budget. Cells spend ATP or light to keep their chemistry away from equilibrium. In our new @PhysRevX paper, Paolo De Los Rios, Daniel Busiello and I work out which steady states a given energy budget can reach in any chemical reaction network
Inside a cell, this budget is spent by networks of chemical reactions. Switches, patterns and self-assembled structures are steady states of these networks, kept away from equilibrium by fuel. Without fuel they relax back. But most rate constants in a cell are unknown.
Shiling Liang | 梁师翎 retweeted
How does energy limit what chemical networks can do? To find out, researchers derived bounds on chemical concentrations and reaction driving forces, helping explain biological function and guide the design of lifelike artificial systems.
Read more: go.aps.org/4i2S4fK
ALT A two-panel diagram illustrating how energy constrains a chemical reaction network. At left, clusters of pink shapes represent chemical species connected by reaction pathways within a blue network supplied with fuel by a chemical reservoir. Red and blue paths highlight those that set the thermodynamic limits. At right, a graph with logarithmic concentration axes shows a green band between a red upper bound and a blue lower bound. This bound is the thermodynamic space containing the possible steady-state concentrations. Its width increases with the nonequilibrium driving force, showing how a larger energy budget expands the network’s operating range.
Shiling Liang | 梁师翎 retweeted
For the 2026 APS March Meeting, please consider submitting your abstract to our new focus session on Cellular Sensing and Signaling (04.01.29), which aims to bridge theory and experiments to understand how cells sense and respond to environmental signals.
Major update: Our response theory preprint now provides a comprehensive framework for nonlinear response under arbitrary perturbation strength. arxiv.org/abs/2412.19602
Shiling Liang | 梁师翎 retweeted
The response of an elastic shell made of a nonlinear material when indented by a point source yields scaling exponents useful for modeling the mechanical properties of biological samples such as cysts #biophysics go.aps.org/4jDil1J
Rethinking Carnot: Scientists overcome traditional power-efficiency trade-off phys.org/news/2025-01-rethin… via @physorg_com
Major update! Version 2 of our work on nonequilibrium response theory with Ruicheng (@Richard98430158) is out! A comprehensive framework connecting mean first-passage times, response precision, and thermodynamic bounds. If you've read v1, don't miss the substantial new results!
Key physics advances:
1️⃣New derivation of response bounds via mean first-passage time statistics
2️⃣Found new fundamental bound: response/fluctuation ≤ 1/2 for any single-parameter perturbation in nonequilibrium steady states
3️⃣Exact relations for arbitrary-strength perturbations
As an application, we show how these fundamental physical limits naturally explain the prevalence of simple network architectures in biochemical signaling systems. Full paper: arxiv.org/abs/2412.19602
New in @PhysRevLett: We introduce a minimal model showing how state degeneracy enables heat engines to reach Carnot efficiency at maximum power. Our work provides fundamental insights into collective advantage in finite-time thermodynamics. doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.…
Shiling Liang | 梁师翎 retweeted
Join us as a postdoc! The call for the ELBE Postdoctoral Fellows Program at the Center for Systems Biology @mpicbg & @mpi_pks is open now. Application deadline is February 14th.
More information: csbdresden.de/join-us/as-a-p…
Thrilled to announce that after completing my PhD @EPFL, I start my ELBE postdoc journey at @csbdresden, @mpi_pks & @mpicbg from this November! Looking forward to exploring new research frontiers in Dresden.
Shiling Liang | 梁师翎 retweeted
In biological systems, optimal transduction strategies may boost information harvesting compared to the ideal case in which all the degrees of freedom are known
Letter: go.aps.org/4gWl7yN
Viewpoint: go.aps.org/4dGd8Dc
ALT about two dozen honey bees clustering on the surface of a yellow honey comb