The systems biology of cellular decision-making. After a PhD in Mathematical Physics, Peter Swain worked at the Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces, at Tel Aviv University, and at the Rockefeller University before joining the faculty of McGill University. He moved to the University of Edinburgh in 2008 as a SULSA Professor of Systems Biology. Peter Swain Swain Lab website Lab members Ian Yang, Dr Julien Hurbain, Lidya Damtew, Dr Francois El-Daher, Dr Ivan Clark, Iman Ghadimi, and Xiaoquan Guo Research We investigate how cells sense and respond to changing environments, focusing on budding yeast as an exemplar eukaryotic cell. We specialise in time-lapse microscopy, watching cells in real time as they respond to change, and use machine learning to integrate our data with mathematical models. More recently, we have been studying too pathogenic yeast and their sensitivity to antifungal drugs. Selected publications Montano-Gutierrez LF, Sturrock M, Farquhar IL, Correia K, Shahrezaei V, Swain PS. Dynamic patterns of gene expression match extracellular signals through push-pull regulation. PLoS Genet 21 (2025) e1011943Y Huo, W Danecka, I Farquhar, K Mailliet, T Moses, EWJ Wallace, and PS Swain. The type of carbon source not the growth rate it supports can determine diauxie in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Commun Biol 8 (2025) 325JMJ Pietsch, AF Muñoz, DA Adjavon, I Farquhar, IBN Clark, and PS Swain. Determining growth rates from bright-field images of budding cells through identifying overlaps. eLife 12 (2023) e79812 This article was published on 2026-04-23
