Chen Research Group
Computational Biochemistry & Biophysics

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Dec 8, 2016
The Chen lab is relocating to Univeristy of Massachusetts Amherst. Today is the last day, of all the great time that we have so fortunately enjoyed at Kansas State University and Manhattan! KSU has been such a great family, and we will dearly miss our friends, wonderful colleagues, and the midwestern charm! Best wishes to KSU, Manhattan and everyone ...

A few last (and lasting) memories ...

(Bill Synder Family Stadium, F16; We own Texas; EMAW)

(Homecoming, F16)

(Hale Library, F16)

(Office, LD Maple & Orchid)

(Hale Library, today)

(Anderson Hall, today)

Sept 26, 2016
We welcome Debabani back for a short 3-month visit!

May 26, 2016
We said good bye to Weihong a second (and final?) time after his short stint back in the lab as a postdoctoral fellow. We congratulate him on many things that he has accomplished during his times at K-State and wish him the best in his exciting adventures as a full-time entrepreneur!

February 15, 2016
We welcome Lynn Schrag to the lab! Lynn will work on the new joint project with Dr. Om Prakash's lab that aims to combine simulation and NMR and biophysical experiments to determine how cancer-associated mutations may affect the structure and interaction of p53 transactivation domain.

February 1, 2016
Jianhan's promotion to Full Professor has been approved, starting July 2016. He is now very sure that he would consider picking up new hobbies as promised back in 2012.

November 18, 2015
Our joint project with Drs. Zolkiewski and Prakash has been funded by NIGMS through a 5-year competitive R01 grant! The project aims to develop multi-scale enhanced sampling techniques for IDPs and to combine simulation with experiment to determine how the structure and interactions of p53 transactivation domain may be affected by post-translational modifications and cancer-associated mutations.

August 25, 2015
We welcome Pavithra Natarajan to the lab as a rotation graduate student!

August 18, 2015
We received a Bridging Grant from K-INBRE to support work on p53 transactivation domain. This grant will allow Weihong to return to Manhattan to continue his development of the MSES method. Welcome back, Weihong!

July 28, 2015
Congratulations to Xiaorong and Alex for having their first papers from K-State accepted by Biophysical Journal. Their work combine structural analysis and atomisitc simulation to demonstrate that the BH3-only protein binding interface of anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-xL is highly dynamic and poised to adopt alternative conformations in response to ligand binding.

June 08, 2015
We welcome in-coming K-State freshman Samantha Gameros to the lab! Samantha will work jointly with Prof. Davis to understand how plants regulate boric acid uptake.

May 18, 2015
Congratulations to Michael for receiving admision with full scholarship (!) to his dream law school! Best of luck with your next adventure, Michael!

May 15, 2015
Congratulations to Kuo Hao for having his first paper at K-State accepted by JCC, which is titled "Multiscale Enhanced Sampling of Intrinsically Disordered Protein Conformations"! (JCC)

May 5, 2015
Congratulations to Xiaorong for passing her PhD preliminary exam!

March 25, 2015
Our work on examining the modulation of the disordered conformational ensembles of the p53 Transactivation Domain (TAD) by cancer-associated mutations has been accepted by PLoS Comput Biol. (PLoS)

August 18, 2014
Our joint project with Dr. Jeremy Schmit's lab in Physics has been funded by NIGMS through a 5-year competitive R01 grant! The project aims to develop a multi-scale approach that integrates theory and simulation to understand the mechanism and kinetics of amyloid growth.

August 15, 2014
We welcome Xiaorong Liu to the group! Xiaorong received her B.S. in Applied Chemistry and Master in Chemical Biology from Wuhan University. She has also spent two years in Delaware (with Sandeep Patel) before transfering to K-State.

July 25, 2014
Arianna concluded her successful SUROP summer project with a presentation titled "Protein interactions in cell apoptosis" at the SUROP final event.


(Arianna accepting her SUROP certificate from Dean Shanklin)

July 07, 2014
Congratulations to Weihong for successful defense of his PhD dissertation titled "Multi-Scale Simulations Of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins And Development Of Enhanced Sampling Techniques"!


(Alex and Weihong Graduation Party at Jianhan's house; Click above for more photos)

June 17, 2014
Congratulations to Michael for receiving a $1000 Undergraduate Research Scholarship from the College of Arts and Sciences!

June 17, 2014
Congratulations to Alex for successful defense of his master thesis on "Understanding amyloid fibril growth through theory and simulation"!

May 03, 2014
Congratulations to Debabani on winning a very prestigious Ramalingaswami Re-entry Fellowship from the Department of Biotechnology in India. The followship will provide Rs. 32.5 lakhs research support over five years.

April 23, 2014
We welcome Arianna Vessal, who is joining us during the summer as a participant of the K-State Summer Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (SUROP). Arianna is currently a sophomore in Biochemistry at Virginia Tech.

April 4, 2014
Congratulations to Michael Mohan for receiving a Cancer Research Award from the Johnson Center for Basic Cancer Research.


(Eleanor Deibler (L) & Jan Woodyard present the VFW Post 1786 Award to Michael Mohan at the Award Banquet)

April 2, 2014
We received an Innovative Research Award from the Johnson Center for Basic Cancer Research to study the mechanism for facile binding of BH3-only proteins to the pro-survival protein Bcl-w.

March 25, 2014
Congratulations to Weihong for winning the 2013 Graduate Research Award, the highest recognition the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics offers to graduate students who have achieved an outstanding level of research excellence.

February 03, 2014
We welcome Kuo Hao (Bruce) Lee and Zhiguang Jia to the lab! Dr. Lee is from Taiwan and earned his PhD in Physics from University of Idaho (with F. Marty Ytreberg) in 2012. Dr. Jia is from Beijing and earned his PhD in Biochemistry from University of Queensland (with Alan Mark) in 2013.


(Welcome/Chinese New Year celebration at Jianhan's house)

January 28, 2014
Warm congratulations to Weihong for getting his paper on a very nice multi-scale enhanced sampling (MSES) method accepted by JCTC as a Letter. The method addresses one of the key limitations in the popular temperature replica exchange (T-RE) sampling technique for simulating large-scale conformational transitions such as protein folding. The basic idea is to couple efficient topology-based coarse-grained models with all-atom ones to enhance the sampling of atomistic protein energy landscape. The bias from the coupling is removed by Hamiltonian replica exchange, thus allowing one to benefit simultaneously from faster transitions of coarse-grained modeling and accuracy of atomistic force fields.

(all replicas in MSES sample similar and complete conformational space, while replicas in traditional T-RE are trapped in various major states)


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