Yanyan has been trying to understand the antithetic effect of homologous RND1 and RhoD GTPases in mammalian plexin regulation using MD simulations and proposed a putative structural model. This work is now published on eLife, which is a perfect ending of Yanyan’s postdoc training in the group, co-supervised by Drs Yibing SHAN and Chen SONG. This work was in collaboration with Dr. Xuewu ZHANG’s lab at UT Southwestern Medical Center. The paper can be found here.
In collaboration with Prof. Zhiqiang YAN’s lab, we studied the gating mechanism of the tethered mechanosensitive ion channel NompC by using MD simulations and electrophysiology experiments. We revealed the molecular details of an interesting “push-to-open” gating mechanism for this unique channel, which may enable cells to sense compression or shrinkage. Congratulations to Yang and many thanks to everyone who participated in the project. The paper is now online at: https://elifesciences.org/articles/58388
Chen SONG and Chun TANG invited Prof. Shi-Jie CHEN from the University of Missouri to talk about his work on the prediction of RNA structures and small molecule-RNA interactions in the CQB Seminar on May 17. It was a popular seminar, with more than 90 people attended the online Zoom Meeting and many interesting questions discussed.
Chunhonginvestigated the valence selectivity of RyR channels by using atomistic MD simulations, and observed the details of competition between Ca++ and K+ in the extended selectivity filter of RyRs. The presence of Ca++ significantly decreases the K+ conductance, while K+ has little impact on Ca++ permeation, due to the much stronger binding of Ca++ in the highly negatively charged and size-limited luminal vestibule. This is a further application of our recently developed multisite Ca++ model, showing atomistic details of valence selectivity of RyRs that are in good agreement with previous experimental findings and simplified models. The paper can be found here.
Finally, we were able to have a group outing and played CS.
Dr. Chen SONG was invited to give a talk at “The First Great Bay Area Biophysics and New Drug Discovery Forum” on April 10, where he presented our recent story on the valence selectivity of ryanodine receptors. Dr. Yang WANG presented a poster of our NompC work at the forum, which attracted much attention.
Sadly, Dr. Aihua ZHANG is leaving the group for family reasons. Aihua was one of the first members who joined me to build up the group. He has contributed so much to the group, not only in developing the new calcium model allowing us to simulate calcium-permeating ion channels, but also in helping group members in so many different ways. It has been a great pleasure to work with Aihua. We wish him all the best in every aspect of the future.
Lei WANG, Chunhong LIU, and Yang WANG presented their work as posters at the 2021 BPS meeting (Feb 22-26), respectively. Chen SONG was selected to be one of the four speakers in “The Future of Biophysics Symposium“, a great honor from the biophysical society annual meeting!
Quite a few group members stayed in Beijing during the Chinese New Year holidays. We had a hot pot together in the Jiayuan cafeteria on the first day of the Niu Year. Happy New Year, everyone!
Dr. Chen SONG was invited to give a seminar at the PSI seminar series on Jan 20: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/byAxfC4VTIQZCxI0j4QbIQ
The PSI seminars are organized by Profs. ZHENG Weimou, GONG Haipeng, and BU Dongbo, mainly focusing on computational studies of protein structures.
