PHYS-LL01

Preferred major field of study or minimum required skills

Students from Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Math or other related majors who are interested in computational biology research are highly demanded. Skill required: None. Students can learn the programs as beginners.

Scholarly significance/intellectual merit

Zika virus causes serious birth defects and autoimmune neurological diseases. Even though many efforts have been made, there is no specific vaccine or medicine for Zika. Among many unknowns of Zika, the mystery of protein-protein recognition and assembly for this virus has puzzled the researchers for a long time. Recently Dr. Li’s group has developed series of computational tools to study the capsid assembly for virus. The fast developments of computational algorithms and recent solved high-resolution structures provide us a great opportunity to learn crucial mechanisms for Zika viral capsid assembly. This project plans to study Zika virus using multiscale computational approaches, which will reveal the fundamental mechanisms of the features of Zika virus and therefore help researchers to develop vaccine and medicine for Zika.

Research question(s)

1. What is the self-assembly mechanism for Zika.
2. What are the unique features of Zika compared to other lavivirus, such as the dengue, yellow fever, and West Nile viruses.
3. What are the electrostatic features of the Zika virus capsid.
4. How to design drugs to inhibit the function of Zika.

Methods/techniques/instruments to be learned/utilized

At Dr. Li's lab you have the possibility to learn the following:

• Linux/Shell script
• Simulation programs: NAMD/VMD/Chimera
• Programs: DelPhi/DelPhiForce