 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|||
|
ZLAB has moved to U Mass Medical School in 2008. Dr. Zhiping Weng is now Professor and Director of Program in Bioinformatics and Integrative Biology. We will continue to update http://zlab.bu.edu until a smooth transition is completed. |
|||
|
ZLAB stands for "Zhiping's Lab". It has two components: the computational component still needs a catchy name, while the experimental component is called the Protein Engineering Laboratory. Led by Dr. Zhiping Weng, we are a bunch of young people eager to establish careers in Bioinformatics and Biomolecular Engineering. Trying very hard not to be interested in everything, we focus our research on molecular interactions, such as (1) interaction between regulatory proteins and their DNA/RNA target sites (2) protein-protein interaction (3) protein-peptide interaction (4) interaction between protein structure building blocks. ZLAB has two major projects: |
|||
 |
Gene Regulation | ||
| We aim to develop computational methods for understanding the molecular mechanism of gene regulation. Specifically, we develop novel ways to discover cis-regulatory elements in genomic DNA. Since such elements are of low information content, we pursue multiple approaches: (1) better characterizing transcriptional start sites and alternative proximal promoters; (2) detecting cis-element clusters using probabilistic models; (3) identifying genes that are co-regulated and taking advantage of the enrichment of the same cis-elements in their promoters. | |||
|
Protein Docking and Design | ||
| We develop methods to compute binding affinities between protein molecules. Combining this ability with a Fast-Fourier-Transform based search algorithm, we develop algorithms for predicting protein-complex structures. We can also search in the sequence space and predict mutations that lead to improved binding. In the wet-lab component of ZLAB, we produce mutant proteins according to computational predictions and test their binding affinities. The ultimate goal is to establish in vitro evolution procedures to fine-tune computational predictions. | |||
 |
||||||||