On April 27, 2025, Dr. Chen Song was invited to deliver a presentation at "The 18th Chinese Chemical Society National Conference on Computer Chemistry of China", held in Xi'an. He introduced Ruihan's research on Virtual Directed Evolution of Antimicrobial Peptides through Deep Reinforcement Learning. The draft of this work is available on bioRxiv.
Peptide chemical biology conference
On April 19, 2025, Dr. Chen Song was invited to deliver a talk at "The 7th National Conference of Protein & Peptide Chemical Biology" held in Qingdao. He introduced Jiaxuan's research on mechanism-driven screening of antimicrobial peptides. This work will be submitted to bioRxiv soon. Ruihan attended the conference too.
Charles Cox seminar
On April 9, 2025, Prof. Charles Cox from the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute was invited by Prof. Chen Song to deliver a CQB seminar titled "A new family of PIEZO channel auxiliary subunits". He introduced his team's discovery of MyoD-family inhibitor proteins (MDFIC and MDFI) as auxiliary subunits of PIEZO1/2 channels. Cryo-EM studies revealed their direct binding to PIEZO2's pore module. Prof. Charles Cox provides extensive data, highlighting their role as key regulators integrating mechanical signals into transcriptional pathways.
GPx4 paper online
Qingyang's study on glutathione peroxidase 4 (GPx4) has been published online in the J. Mol. Biol. (Link). Conducted in collaboration with Prof. Luhua Lai's lab, the research combines multiscale molecular dynamics simulations with experimental assays to reveal the detailed physical interactions between GPx4 and membranes composed of different phospholipids, and their peroxidized derivatives.
This work provides new insights into the molecular mechanisms of GPx4-membrane interactions. Congratulations to Qingyang on this significant achievement!
Project kick-off meeting
On March 31, 2025, the project kick-off meeting of the National Key R&D Program, "Principles of membrane protein design as functional modules", was launched at Peking University. Leaders from the China National Center for Biotechnology Development and Peking University attended, alongside experts from top institutions.
Project leader Prof. Chen Song highlighted the integration of AI and physics-driven methods to address challenges in membrane protein design, aiming for applications in biomanufacturing, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals. Experts stressed collaboration and practical impact.
Now in its implementation phase, the five-year project aims to advance synthetic biology and drive innovation in biotechnology.
Welcome YC
We are delighted to welcome Yiechang (YC) Lin to our group! Yiechang holds a PhD from the Australian National University and brings a strong passion for studying lipid-protein interactions, membrane proteins, and leveraging AlphaFold to tackle key biological questions. Once again, welcome aboard, YC!
SecY paper online
The collaborative study on SecY, together with Prof. Long LI's lab and Prof. Ning GAO's lab, has been published in Cell (Link). With experimentally resolved Cryo-EM structures, Yang conducted a series of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to investigate how SecY influences the folding behaviors of the transmembrane substrates within SecY. The results demonstrated that the cytoplasmic and extracellular cavities of the SecY channel create two distinct environments, facilitating the unfolding and folding of the transmembrane segments, respectively. These results indicate that SecY is more than just a passive protein-conducting channel, it is a chaperone. Dali and Song also participated in the collaboration and conducted additional computations to validate the protein's function. Congratulations!
CQB Annual Meeting 2024
As we close the chapter on 2024, CQB annual meeting (2024) was held on January 4, 2025. Jingze presented her research on the molecular mechanics study of the ion channel NOMPC and was awarded the scholarship of quantitative biology. Lingfeng and Zefeng received the second and third prizes for their poster presentations, respectively. Additionally, the group members have excelled in their contributions this year. Congratulations!!
Global MOOC Conference 2024
Invited by the the Ministry of Education, Prof. Chen Song and collaborators designed a showcase class for the future AI-assisted education at the Global MOOC and Online Education Conference 2024, held in London on December 12th, 2024. Prof. Chen Song and Prof. Sai Li co-developed this class of computational biology, an interdisciplinary field deeply influenced by AI. Zefeng Zhu and Ruihan Dong from Song Group participated in the development as well as the live demonstration of the class in London.
NOMPC paper online
Jingze Duan's first paper focusing on NOMPC has been published online in eLife (Link). NOMPC, a mechanosensitive ion channel from the TRP family, converts mechanical stimuli into ionic signals to excite neurons. Using all-atom molecular dynamics simulations, we identified that torque on the TRP domain toward the extracellular side directly drives channel opening, with compression and twisting of the AR domain coupling to facilitate this process. These findings support a twist-to-open gating model mediated by the AR domain's compression-twist coupling. Congratulations!
