I am Joseph Zhou, a researcher of biophysics in the department of Biological Physics of Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Germany. I am interested in the molecule dynamics of proteins and protein-protein interactions networks, the regulation and signal network of the cell, and signal amplification in the cell during the mitosis.

My current research involves finding the relationship between protein dynamics and drug resistance of the HIV protease. Instead of using a traditional measure of “genetic distance”, a dynamics-based measure is used to build a phylogenic tree of HIV-1 protease. The relationship between the mutation and the drug-resistance can be revealed by the analysis of the tree. Traditional dynamic analysis for biomolecules is complicated and time-consuming. My colleagues and I are trying to employ a smarter method to investigate the changes of the protein dynamics due to the sequence mutations of HIV protease. Our results so far show that the mutations have obvious effects on the movements of the “flaps” of the HIV protease. The relationship between the change in dynamics and the drug resistance can be clarified from our further analysis of the genetic homology.

I do believe what Denis Nobel said about the approach about biology (you can find my former blog about “Ten Commandments in system biology” http://www.imechanica.org/node/2050). The life can not be worked out simply from the bottom-up approach. Gene is just the music score of the life. There is a mysterious mechanism in the cell, tissue even organ level which reads the score and play the music of the life. So the main topics of my blog will cover:

1) Report my research on the collective effects or emerging properties from the network of genes, proteins and cells; Hopefully, I could find some researchers who share my interests and we can discuss or even collaborate :-)

2) Comments and introduction on the new ideas from the conferences, seminars, workshops which I participate.

3) Other interesting topics about biophysics, cell development, tissue growth, network etc.

On the personal side, I am quite a fan of Classic music, from Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Debussy, Scarlatti…, you name it. :-) However, I also like folk singing and I have a large collection of the albums of folk songs across Europe. One of my favorite group is MadriGirls. They sing songs with a special interests in early music. You can listen to their wonderful voices in their website in mySpace: http://www.myspace.com/madrigirls.