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Xiaojun Tian

Xiaojun Tian

Associate Professor,
School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering
  • Xiaojun.Tian@asu.edu
  • Phone: 480-727-0023
  • ‌
  • ISTB4-273 Tempe, AZ 85287
  • Mail code: 9709
    Campus: Tempe
  • ‌
Biography Research Teaching Public Work
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Long Bio

Dr. Xiaojun Tian received his Ph. D. degree in systems biology from Nanjing University in 2012 and spent five years as a postdoctoral fellow at Virginia Tech and the University of Pittsburgh. In 2017, he joined the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering at Arizona State University as an Assistant Professor. His research interests are in employing quantitative experiments and mathematical modeling to understand fundamental problems in systems and synthetic biology. Over the past several years, his lab has made outstanding achievements with several publications at Nature Chemical Biology, Nature Communications, ACS synthetic biology, PLOS Computational Biology. Recently, he received the prestigious NIH Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA) award and NSF Career Award.

Research Website URL
https://tianlaboratory.com/
Google Scholar URL
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Ev3k7HwAAAAJ&hl=en
Research Interests

 

Systems Biology, Synthetic Biology, Nonlinear Dynamics, Gene Circuits, EMT

 

Research Group

Tian Lab is looking for talented and motivated graduate students. Visit the group webpage here.

Publications
  1. Zhang, R.r,+, Goetz, H+, Melendez-Alvarez, J.+, Li, J., Ding, T., Wang, X., and Tian, X.-J.*, Winner-Takes-All Resource Competition Redirects Cascading Cell Fate Transitions. Nature Communications, 12, 853, 2021.
  2. Zhang, R.r,+, Li, J.∞,+, Melendez-Alvarez, J., Chen, X., Sochor, P.#, Zhang, Q., Goetz, H, Ding, T., Wang, X.*, and Tian, X.-J.*, Topology-Dependent Interference of Synthetic Gene Circuit Function by Growth Feedback, Nature Chemical Biology, 16, 695-701, 2020.
  3. Melendez-Alvarez, J.+, He, C., Zhang, R.r,+, Kuang, Y., and Tian, X.-J.*, Emergent Damped Oscillation Induced by Nutrient-Modulating Growth Feedback. ACS Synthetic Biology, 10, 5, 1227-1236, 2021.
  4. Fu H., Gui Y., Liu S., Wang Y., Bastacky S., Qiao Y., Zhang R.r, Bonin C., Hargis G., Yu Y., Donald K., Biswas P., Zhou Y., Wang Y., Tian, X.-J.*, Liu Y.*, and Zhou D*. The Hepatocyte Growth Factor Pathway is a Key Determinant of the Fibrotic Kidney Local Microenvironment. iScience, 24(10), 103112, 2021.
  5. Liu S., Gui Y., Wang M., Zhang L., Xu T., Pan Y., Zhang K., Yu Y., Xiao L., Qiao Y., Bonin C., Hargis G., Huan T., Yu Y., Tao J., Zhang R.r, Kreutzer D., Zhou Y., Tian X.-J., Wang Y., Fu H., An X., Liu S., Zhou D. Serum integrative omics reveals the landscape of human diabetic kidney disease. Molecular Metabolism, 54, 101367, 2021.
  6. Barra D., Melendez-Alvarez, J., and Tian, X.-J.*, Control of tissue homeostasis, regeneration, and degeneration by coupled bi-directional bistable switches. PLOS Computational Biology, 17(11): e1009606. 2021.
  7. Goetz, H. +, Melendez-Alvarez, J. +, Chen, L., and Tian, X.-J.* A Plausible Accelerating Function of Partial EMT States in Cancer Metastasis, PLOS Computational Biology, 16(3):e1007682. 2020.
  8. Tian, X.-J.*,+, Zhou, D.+, Fu, H.+, Zhang, R.r, Wang, X., Huang, S., Liu, Y.*, and Xing, J.* Sequential Wnt Agonist then Antagonist Treatment Accelerates Tissue Repair and Minimizes Fibrosis, iScience, 23(5): 101047. 2020.
  9. Chen, Y.-J., Cheng, Y.-Y., Wang, W., Tian, X.-J., Lefever, D.E., Taft, D.A., Zhang, J., and Xing, J. Rapid, modular, and cost-effective generation of donor DNA constructs for CRISPR-based gene knock-in, Biology Methods and Protocols, 5(1): bpaa006. 2020.
  10. Menn, D.J., Sochor, P.#, Goetz, H., Tian, X.-J.*, and Wang X.*, Intracellular noise level determines ratio control strategy confined by speed-accuracy tradeoff, ACS Synthetic Biology, 8(6):1352-60, 2019.
  11. Xing, J.*, and Tian, X.-J.*, Investigating Epithelial-To-Mesenchymal Transition with Integrated Computational and Experimental Approaches. Physical Biology, 16(3):031001, 2019.
  12. Singh, M.+, Tian, X.-J.+, Donnenberg, V.S., Watson, A.M., Zhang, J., Stabile, L.P., Watkins, S.C., Xing, J., and Sant, S. Targeting the Temporal Dynamics of Hypoxia-Induced Tumor-Secreted Factors Halts Tumor Migration. Cancer Research, 79(11):2962-77, 2019.
  13. Fu, H., Liu, S., Bastacky, S., Wang, X., Tian, X.-J., and Zhou, D*. Diabetic Kidney Diseases Revisited: A New Perspective for A New Era. Molecular Metabolism, 30, 250-263, 2019.
  14. Li, J.∞,+, Liu, D., Tian, X.-J., Koseki, S., Chen, S., Ye, X., and Ding, T*. Novel Antibacterial Modalities Against Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus Derived from Plants. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, 59(sup1):S153-S161, 2018.
  15. Stone, A., Zhang, R.r, and Tian, X.-J.*, Coupling Shared and Tunable Negative Competition Against Winner-Take-All Resource Competition Via CRISPRi Moieties. 2021 American Control Conference (ACC), 1882-1882, 2021.
  16. Tian, X.-J.*, Manuela Vanegas, V., and Goetz, H., Modeling ncRNA-mediated circuits in cell fate decision. Computational Biology of non-coding RNA in Biomedicine, 411-426, 2019.
  17. Zhang J.+, Tian X.-J.+, Chen Y.-J., Wang W., Watkins S., and Xing J*. Pathway crosstalk enables cells to interpret TGF-β duration. npj Systems Biology and Applications, 4:18, 2018.
  18. Zhou, D., Fu, H., Xiao, L., Mo, H., Zhuo, H., Tian, X.-J, Lin, L., Xing, J., and Liu, Y. Fibroblast-Specific β-catenin Signaling Dictates the Outcome of AKI. Journal of the American Society of Nephrology 29 (4), 1257-1271, 2018.
  19. Tian, X.-J.+, Zhang, H.+, Sannerud, J., and Xing, J., Achieving diverse and monoallelic olfactory receptor selection through dual-objective optimization design. PNAS, 113: E2889-98, 2016.
  20. Tian, X.-J.*, Zhang, H., Zhang, J., and Xing, J.* mRNA-miRNA Reciprocal Regulation Enabled Bistable Switch Directs Cell Fate Decision. FEBS Lett, 590: 3443-55, 2016.
  21. Zhang, J., Tian, X.-J., and Xing, J., Signal Transduction Pathways of EMT Induced by TGFβ, SHH, and WNT and Their Crosstalks. J Clin Med, 5: 41, 2016. (Citation= 258).
  22. Zhang, J.+, Tian, X.-J.+, Zhang, H., Teng, Y., Li, R., Bai, F., Elankumaran, S., and Xing, J., TGFβ-induced epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition proceeds through stepwise activation of multiple feedback loops. Sci Signal, 7: ra91, 2014. (Citation= 335)
  23. Zhang, H., Tian, X.-J., Mukhopadhyay, A., Kim, K. S., and Xing, J., Statistical mechanics model for the dynamics of collective epigenetic histone modification. Phys Rev Lett, 112: 068101, 2014.
  24. Wang, P., Song, C., Zhang, H., Wu, Z., Tian, X.-J., and Xing, J., Epigenetic state network approach for describing cell phenotypic transitions. Interface Focus, 4: 20130068, 2014.
  25. Zhang, Q. H., Tian, X.-J., Liu, F., and Wang, W., A switch-like dynamic mechanism for the initiation of replicative senescence. FEBS Lett, 588: 4369-74, 2014.
  26. Tian, X.-J., Zhang, H., and Xing, J., Coupled reversible and irreversible bistable switches underlying TGFβ-induced epithelial to mesenchymal transition. Biophys J, 105: 1079-89, 2013. (Citation= 191).
  27. Hu, Y., Ru, N., Xiao, H., Chaturbedi, A., Hoa, N. T., Tian, X.-J., Zhang, H., Ke, C., Yan, F., Nelson, J., Li, Z., Gramer, R., Yu, L., Siegel, E., Zhang, X., Jia, Z., Jadus, M. R., Limoli, C. L., Linskey, M. E., Xing, J., and Zhou, Y. H., Tumor-specific chromosome mis-segregation controls cancer plasticity by maintaining tumor heterogeneity. PLoS One, 8: e80898, 2013.
  28. Xing, J., Yu, J., Zhang, H., and Tian, X.-J., Computational modeling to elucidate mechanisms of epigenetic memory, in Epigenetic Technological Applications, Elsevier (2015).
  29. Tian, X.-J., Liu, F., Zhang, X. P., Li, J., and Wang, W., A two-step mechanism for cell fate decision by coordination of nuclear and mitochondrial p53 activities. PLoS One, 7: e38164, 2012.
  30. Tian, X.-J., Zhang, X. P., Liu, F., and Wang, W., Interlinking positive and negative feedback loops creates a tunable motif in gene regulatory networks. Phys Rev E, 80: 011926, 2009. (Citation= 110).
Research Activity

Xiaojun Tian, Multi-Scale Engineering of Heterogeneity in the Host-Aware Synthetic Gene Circuits. NIH (7/1/2021-6/30/2026).

Xiaojun Tian, URoL: Epigenetics 1: Epigenetics Control by Noncoding RNA. NSF (08/01/2019 - 07/31/2022).

Xiaojun Tian, CAREER: Molecular and Cellular Mechanisms Underlying Circuit-Host Interactions. NSF (02/01/2022 - 01/31/2027).

Courses
2025 Summer
Course Number Course Title
BDE 792 Research
BDE 795 Continuing Registration
2025 Spring
Course Number Course Title
BDE 799 Dissertation
BDE 792 Research
BDE 795 Continuing Registration
BDE 799 Dissertation
BDE 792 Research
2024 Fall
Course Number Course Title
BME 591 Seminar
BDE 792 Research
ASU 101-BME The ASU Experience
BDE 799 Dissertation
ASU 101-BME The ASU Experience
BME 598 Special Topics
BME 494 Special Topics
2024 Summer
Course Number Course Title
BDE 792 Research
BDE 792 Research
BDE 795 Continuing Registration
2024 Spring
Course Number Course Title
BME 591 Seminar
BME 331 Transport Phenomena for BME
BDE 799 Dissertation
BDE 792 Research
BDE 792 Research
BDE 795 Continuing Registration
BDE 799 Dissertation
BME 331 Transport Phenomena for BME
2023 Fall
Course Number Course Title
BME 591 Seminar
BDE 792 Research
AML 592 Research
BDE 799 Dissertation
BME 598 Special Topics
2023 Summer
Course Number Course Title
BDE 792 Research
BDE 792 Research
2023 Spring
Course Number Course Title
BDE 799 Dissertation
BDE 792 Research
BDE 795 Continuing Registration
BDE 799 Dissertation
2022 Fall
Course Number Course Title
BDE 792 Research
AML 592 Research
BDE 799 Dissertation
BME 598 Special Topics
BDE 792 Research
2022 Summer
Course Number Course Title
BDE 792 Research
BDE 792 Research
2022 Spring
Course Number Course Title
BME 331 Transport Phenomena for BME
BDE 799 Dissertation
BDE 792 Research
BDE 792 Research
BME 331 Transport Phenomena for BME
BDE 795 Continuing Registration
BDE 799 Dissertation
2021 Fall
Course Number Course Title
BDE 792 Research
AML 592 Research
BDE 799 Dissertation
BME 598 Special Topics
BDE 799 Dissertation
2021 Summer
Course Number Course Title
BDE 792 Research
BDE 792 Research
2021 Spring
Course Number Course Title
BME 331 Transport Phenomena for BME
BDE 799 Dissertation
BDE 792 Research
BME 331 Transport Phenomena for BME
2020 Fall
Course Number Course Title
BME 492 Honors Directed Study
BME 493 Honors Thesis
BME 792 Research
BDE 792 Research
AML 592 Research
BDE 799 Dissertation
BME 493 Honors Thesis
BME 492 Honors Directed Study
BME 394 Special Topics
BME 394 Special Topics
BME 394 Special Topics
BME 394 Special Topics
2020 Summer
Course Number Course Title
BDE 792 Research
2020 Spring
Course Number Course Title
BME 792 Research
BME 493 Honors Thesis
BME 592 Research
BME 492 Honors Directed Study
BME 599 Thesis
BME 394 Special Topics
BME 394 Special Topics
BDE 799 Dissertation
BME 492 Honors Directed Study
BME 394 Special Topics
BDE 792 Research
BME 493 Honors Thesis
BME 394 Special Topics
Work History

2014~2017      Postdoctoral Associate, University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA

2012~2014      Postdoctoral Associate, Virginia Tech, VA, USA

Service

Editor, Associate Editor for 2 peer-reviewed journals

  1. Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering (MBE) (Associate Editor)
  2. eLife (Guest Editor) (IF= 8.14)

Member of Editorial Board: 5

  1. Frontiers in Microbiology (IF=5.640)
  2. PLOS ONE (IF=3.240)
  3. Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering (MBE) (IF=1.285)
  4. Austin Journal of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics 
  5. Journal of Genetics and Molecular Biology

International/national conference sessions chaired: 2

  1. 2021 American Control Conference, invited session "Control in Synthetic Biology" (May 26-28, 2021)
  2. The 2nd International Conference on Biomedical and Biological Engineering (2017)

International/national conference program committee: 1

  1. The 3rd International Symposium on Mathematical and Computational Oncology (ISMCO'21), October 11-13, 2021

Peer Reviewer for 32 Journals

 

  1. Nature Computational Science
  2. Current Opinion in Microbiology
  3. Nucleic Acids Research
  4. PLOS Computational Biology
  5. BMC Systems Biology
  6. ACS Synthetic Biology
  7. Synthetic Biology
  8. mSystems
  9. npj Systems Biology
  10. Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters
  11. Biophysical Journal
  12. Scientific Reports
  13. Journal of the Royal Society Interface
  14. Molecular Therapy-Nucleic Acids
  15. Journal of Molecular Cell Biology
  16. PLoS One
  17. Cancers 
  18. Physica Scripta
  19. Processes
  20. Acta Biotheoretica
  21. Journal of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
  22. BioMed Research International
  23. International Journal of Oncology
  24. Oncology Reports
  25. Oncology Letters
  26. FEBS Letters
  27. Molecular Medicine Reports 
  28. IEEE Transactions on NanoBioscience
  29. Advanced Biosystems
  30. BMES
  31. Communications in Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulation
  32. frontiers in microbiology

 

Proposal Review Service for 5 Funding Agencies

  1. US Army Research Office, ad hoc Reviewer (2019)
  2. NIH MABS Study Section, ad hoc Reviewer (2020)
  3. NSF RoL, Panel Reviewer (2020)
  4. NSF GRFP Reviewer (2020,2021,2022)
  5. Reviewer for grant competition at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (2020)
Expertise Areas
Biophysics
Cancer
Microbiology
Nonlinear Dynamical Systems
Synthetic Biology
Systems Biology
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