Research

Research in the Xia lab focuses on computational structural and systems biology.  We develop computational methods to model complex biomolecular systems such as proteins and protein networks.  Our goal is to understand the relationship between sequence, structure, function, and evolution at the level of proteins and protein networks.  The tools we use include informatics, modeling, and simulation.  Our research combines prediction and analysis in modeling proteins and protein networks.

• Computational Structural Biology focuses on computer modeling and analysis of protein structures.  Ongoing projects in the lab include: prediction of protein three-dimensional structure and function, modeling protein sequence-structure-function relationships.

• Computational Systems Biology focuses on computer modeling and analysis of protein networks.  Ongoing projects in the lab include: reconstruction of protein-protein interaction and regulatory networks by genomic data integration, modeling structure and dynamics of protein-protein interaction and regulatory networks.
• Molecular and Network Evolution focuses on evolutionary analysis of proteins and protein networks.  Ongoing projects in the lab include: comparative and evolutionary analysis of proteins, comparative and evolutionary analysis of protein-protein interaction and regulatory networks.
  

• Bioinformatics Algorithms and Applications.  We are interested in developing and applying novel bioinformatics algorithms to analyze biological sequence, structural and functional data, often in collaboration with experimental and computational scientists.