The QBIO 2025 CONFERENCE: Emergent Orders in Living Systems Across Scales was successfully held at the Qunying Hall of Zhongguan New Garden, Peking University, from July 21 to 24, 2025. Originating from the Santa Fe Institute in the United States, the Q-BIO Conference has developed into a global touring event since its inaugural session in 2007 and has now become one of the most influential international academic exchange platforms in the field of quantitative biology. Organized by the Center for Quantitative Biology at Peking University, this conference attracted over 380 scholars from various countries including China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, South Korea, and Pakistan. During the conference, participating scholars engaged in enthusiastic academic exchanges, sparking rich ideological collisions. The conference was supported by the "Graduate Education Innovation Program" of the Graduate School of Peking University.
The conference officially began at 9:00 AM on July 22. Professor Jing-Dong Jackie Han from the Center for Quantitative Biology at Peking University delivered the opening remarks, warmly welcoming all attendees. She briefly reviewed the history of the Q-BIO conference and introduced the central theme of this year’s conference: Emergent Orders in Living Systems Across Scales. Over the next few days, 27 outstanding scientists and young scholars delivered talks covering a range of cutting-edge topics, including nonequilibrium dynamics, multiscale structures in biological networks, principles of self-organization, design principles of synthetic life systems, and AI applications in complex living systems.
Opening speech by Prof. Jing-Dong Jackie Han
Group photo of the conference participants
At the meeting, Professor Nikolaus Rajewsky, a systems biologist from the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Germany, introduced the spatial transcriptomics platform Open-ST developed by his team. He also demonstrated the powerful capability of using spatial omics to predict disease trajectories in various disease models, with particularly high accuracy in distinguishing different individual processes such as cancer and aging.
Professor Jin Wang from Stony Brook University, New York, introduced a cutting-edge physics-based approach to uncover the fundamental mechanisms of cancer. Using single-cell transcriptomic data, his team constructed a “cancer landscape” model in which different cellular states such as normal and cancerous cells are represented as distinct attractors, and the difficulty of transitions between them is quantified by energy barriers.
Professor Jianhua Xing from the University of Pittsburgh shared his recent work on how aging influences cell fate decisions. Professor Jin Yu from the University of California, Irvine, investigated the free energy landscape for transcription factors (TFs) searching target DNA sequences, focusing on how eukaryotic TF domains and dimeric TFs dynamically navigate and recognize sequences along DNA. Meanwhile, Dr. Zhuoyi Song, a young researcher from Fudan University, presented a computational framework for simulating refractory period (RP) distributions in the Drosophila phototransduction cascade, revealing how input statistics, feedback motifs, and spontaneous ion channel noise govern RP timing.
Presentations by Prof. Nikolaus Rajewsky, Prof. Jin Wang, Prof. Jianhua Xing, Prof. Jin Yu, and Dr. Zhuoyi Song
Professor Thomas A. Rando from the University of California, Los Angeles, presented his findings on the fundamental biological processes of muscle regeneration, revealing an unprecedented, transient "hybrid" stem cell state. This discovery marks a paradigm shift in the understanding of cell fate determination, moving away from the traditional deterministic "binary choice" model toward a more dynamic and stochastic framework. In this new model, activated stem cells first enter this intermediate state, with their eventual fate—whether to return to the stem cell pool or continue differentiating to repair tissue—being governed by signals from the surrounding microenvironment.
Researcher Yifan Yang from Westlake University presented his latest findings in aging research, introducing a novel framework based on the shape of the survival curve to distinguish between strategies that extend lifespan while compressing morbidity versus those that proportionally extend both lifespan and morbidity span.
Dr. Zachary Gao Sun from Yale University demonstrated that cytoskeletal criticality arises from the interplay between F-actin organization and active stress generation. Professor Yuansheng Cao from Tsinghua University developed a chromatography-based method to monitor the dynamics of the KaiC hexameric CI domain, showing that ATPase activity is essential for subunit exchange.
Talks by Prof. Thomas A. Rando, Dr. Yifan Yang, Dr. Zachary Gao Sun, and Prof. Yuansheng Cao
Professor Kevin Foster from University of Oxford discussed various aspects of microbial interactions, including the distinct roles of long-range and short-range interactions in microbial competition, how resource overlap can predict pathogen invasiveness, and how interaction structures relate to community stability and diversity.
Researcher Lei Dai from the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology focused on precision engineering of host-associated microbiomes, showing how data-driven and machine-learning models can predict the colonization outcomes of exogenous species in complex communities.
Assistant Professor Po-Yi Ho from Westlake University used experiments and genome-scale metabolic models to show that a species’ growth rate is proportional to the number of nutrients it utilizes in complex environments. Dr. Fajia Sun introduced a real-time nanopore sequencing approach based on dynamic adaptive sampling (DAS) for detecting rare microbes.
Talks by Prof. Kevin Foster, Dr. Lei Dai, Asst. Prof. Po-Yi Ho, and Dr. Fajia Sun
The second day began with the presentation delivered by Professor David Weitz from Harvard University, who proposed a new mechanism for intermediate filament formation—driven by phase separation rather than conventional polymerization.
Professor Adrienne Roeder from Cornell University asked how cells grow to produce smooth leaves or sepals. Her team identified a mutant that disrupts cell growth orientation and tissue stiffness, leading to wrinkled sepals, linked to the convergence of auxin transport proteins.
Professor Robert H. Austin from Princeton University discussed four key issues: the definition of information entropy, the meaning of quorum sensing, information entropy transfer among entities and its experimental validation, and the concept of cyborgs. He presented a brain organoid–robot system where neural signals were mapped to robotic motion via microelectrode arrays, aiming to build integrated systems of biological brains, AI, and robots.
Dr. Dongliang Zhang from the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems proposed a new synchronization model based on an altruistic resource-sharing (ARS) mechanism, where more intelligent agents acquire resources less efficiently. Dr. Shiling Liang, also from the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, developed a framework for universal thermodynamic bound for general networks, connecting global energy input and network topology to local concentrations and reaction affinities.
Talks by Prof. David Weitz, Prof. Adrienne Roeder, Prof. Robert H. Austin, Dr. Dongliang Zhang, and Dr. Shiling Liang
On the final day, Professor Wallace Marshall from the University of California, San Francisco, focusing on "Neuron-free Single-Cell Learning" using the Stentor as a model organism. By employing a simplified biochemical model, he explained and predicted experimental results, revealing the critical role of calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CamKII) signaling in the single-cell learning process.
Professor Ke Li from the University of Exeter introduced two large foundational models for biology: PlantRNA-FM for plant systems, and OmniGenome, a novel model based on structure-contextualized training. Both model show outstanding performance.
Professor Michael Shelley from the Flatiron Institute discussed self-organization dynamics in living systems, highlighting how multiscale interactions among active components drive functional macroscopic structures, using examples like cytoskeletal spindle self-assembly and flow structures in active suspensions.
Professor Sean Megason from Harvard University proposed an “expander-repressor” model to explain organ size control, validated in zebrafish, and explored how morphological coordination across tissues arises through integration of molecular signals and multiscale physical interactions during development.
Talks by Prof. Wallace Marshall, Prof. Ke Li, Prof. Michael Shelley, and Prof. Sean Megason
The afternoon session opened with a talk by Researcher Jie Lin from Peking University, who shared insights into gene behavior under resource constraints, including changes in gene concentration, how transcription noise is buffered by RNA polymerase competition, and the adaptive cost of expressing exogenous genes.
Dr. Hanqing Guo from Westlake University uncovered the intrinsic mechanical complexity of mesoderm invagination in Drosophila. Dr. Xiaojing Yang from Peking University proposed a “synthetic conscription” strategy that resets populations to homogeneous states after stimulation to maintain long-term division of labor in synthetic systems. Dr. Zitong Jerry Wang from Westlake University presented a Bayesian filtering algorithm for intracellular source localization that significantly improves molecular navigation under high-noise conditions.
The final speaker of the conference was Professor Yu-Hai Tu from the Flatiron Institute. Drawing from Schrödinger's classic work What is Life?, he approached the topic from the perspectives of energy, information, and function. Using molecular mechanisms in cellular functions as a foundation, Professor Tu presented a series of classic examples, from Hopfield's dynamic proofreading mechanism to their latest work on the switching mechanism of bacterial flagellar motors, illustrating how life sustains itself by consuming energy. In the conclusion of his talk, he proposed a new perspective to rewrite the second law of thermodynamics—suggesting that the functional function, with the rate of entropy production as its upper bound, describes the rational design principle for achieving optimal biological function through biochemical reaction networks under given energy constraints.
Talks by Dr. Jie Lin, Dr. Hanqing Guo, Asst. Prof. Xiaojing Yang, Dr. Zitong Jerry Wang, and Prof. Yuhai Tu
In addition to the keynote presentations, the conference featured a dedicated poster session, where over 50 research posters were displayed. The majority of these posters came from postdoctoral researchers and PhD students from both domestic and international institutions. The themes covered a wide range of topics in life sciences, including studies on the mechanisms of Alzheimer's disease, the regulation of cell size, the impact of mitochondria on aging based on fluorescence probes, co-evolutionary predictions of microbial metabolites and receptor pairings, AI-assisted protein design, and tumor microenvironment research driven by spatial transcriptomics. This diverse collection of research fully demonstrated the broad and in-depth directions being explored by postdocs and PhD students.
Postdoctoral researchers and PhD students from different countries and research fields engaged in detailed discussions about their research findings and exchanged insights with interdisciplinary peers. Many professors also visited the poster session, engaging in lively conversations with young researchers. From refining experimental design details to brainstorming cutting-edge research ideas, from optimizing technical methods to exploring the potential of interdisciplinary collaboration, the interactions were ongoing throughout the session. The academic atmosphere was particularly vibrant, highlighting the exploratory energy of young researchers and reflecting the depth and value of cross-level academic exchange.
Scholars from different countries and research fields engaged in intense discussions in front of the posters.
After three days of enriching academic presentations and exchanges, the conference concluded successfully. In the closing remarks, Professor Chao Tang, Director of the Peking University Center for Quantitative Biology, emphasized the distinctive nature of this conference, which brought together in-depth discussions on various facets of life sciences. Compared to conventional biology conferences, this event showcased a rare diversity of research fields and topics. The quantitative scientific methods, particularly the principles of mathematics and physics, served as a common foundation, effectively connecting these seemingly disparate research themes. On behalf of the organizing committee, Professor Tang expressed his sincere gratitude to all the attendees, the main organizer of the conference, Researcher Zhiyuan Li from the Peking University Center for Quantitative Biology, and all the volunteers. Before the conference ended, Researcher Zhiyuan Li announced that the Q-BIO 2026 Conference will be held in Chicago, with the theme "Cellular adaptation across spatiotemporal scales." With this, the Q-BIO 2025 International Conference concluded on a successful note.
Closing remarks by Prof. Chao Tang
