Dr. Jianhan Chen's laboratory

"It is commonly assumed that a protein must attain a stable three-dimensional conformation in order to carry out a specific biological function. However, it is now known that certain regions of proteins, and in some cases entire proteins, do not exist in a unique structure, but instead exist in multiple forms. Such intrinsic disorder is believed to play fundamental roles in protein function (and malfunction), particularly cell-cell communication and cancer. Recognition of the essential role of disorder in cancer-related proteins has important implications in design and discovery of new anti-cancer treatment. The research in our group focuses on development of new computational methodologies to better describe and simulate intrinsically disordered proteins, as well as application of these methods to address specific cancer-related biochemical and biophysical problems."