A biophysicist.

I am a graduate student in the Department of Physics, University of Houston, working under the mentorship of Prof. Margaret Cheung. My long-term goal is to study protein-protein interaction and recognition in cell-like conditions using computational and theoretical methods. We use coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations to study the large timescale (us~ms) molecular processes. My research involves close investigation of the mechanism of how Ca2+ signaling protein Calmodulin recognizes and associates with distinct binding domains of kinases. Calmodulin is a dumbbell-shape proteinwith its two globular domains connected by a flexible central linker accomodating binding with more than 300 target kinases. The binding domains of the target kinases are often intrinsically disordered, some with partial residual structures. Our research demonstrates that the binding domain and Calmodulin are both required to undergo conformational changes mutually during binding process. The mechanism was proposed as “conformational and mutually induced fit”. More details can be found in the published article (). My immediate goal is to develop methods of modeling the intrinsically disordered binding domains and computing kinetic binding rates.

Contact:
email: pzhang5 at central.uh.edu