Shi-jie Chen
Professor of Biophysics
Joint Professor of Biochemistry
E-mail:chenshi@missouri.edu
Office: 302 Physics Building
Mail: Physics
223 Physics Building
University of Missouri
Columbia, MO 65211
Phone: 573-882-6626
Fax: 573-882-4195
Lab site: http://vfold.missouri.edu/
Educational background
| Degree | School | Location | Major |
| BS | Zhejiang University | China | Physics |
| PhD | University of California, San Diego | San Diego, Calif. | Physics |
Research description
We are studying the statistical thermodynamics and kinetics and computer modeling of biomolecules and polymers, particularly RNA and protein folding.
Biological molecules are large organic molecules composed of hundreds or thousands of atoms bound together by covalent bonds into a chain-like structure. One of the best known challenges in biology is to understand how biomolecules fold properly into compact structures to perform biological functions and how they mis-fold to cause disease. A fundamental problem we are pursuing is the study of the physical principles that govern folding-unfolding of bio-molecules. Based on the physical principles, we develop statistical mechanical theories and computational models to accurately predict the sequence-structure and structure-activity relationships for biomolecules. This involves biology, physics, computer science and, of course, mathematics.
Selected publications
Cao S., Chen S.J. (2009) Predicting structures and stabilities for H-type pseudoknots with interhelix loops. RNA 15 (4): 696-706
Chen S.J. (2008) RNA folding: conformational statistics, folding kinetics, and ion electrostatics. Annu. Rev. Biophys. 37: 197-214
Tan Z.J., Chen S.J. (2008) Salt dependence of nucleic acid hairpin stability. Biophys. J. 95 (2): 738-52
Cao S., Chen S.J. (2008) Predicting ribosomal frameshifting efficiency. Phys. Biol. 5 (1): 16002
Tan Z.J., Chen S.J. (2008) Electrostatic free energy landscapes for DNA helix bending. Biophys. J. 94 (8): 3137-49
Tan Z.J., Chen S.J. (2007) RNA helix stability in mixed Na+/Mg2+ solution. Biophys. J. 92 (10): 3615-32
Cao S., Chen S.J. (2007) Biphasic folding kinetics of RNA pseudoknots and telomerase RNA activity. J. Mol. Biol. 367 (3): 909-24