Yang Zhang, Ph.D.

Determining structure and function of protein molecules is a cornerstone of modern biology and medicine. The main focus of the Zhang lab is to develop bioinformatics approaches to predict the three-dimensional structures of proteins from amino acid sequences and then deduce the biological functions based on the sequence-to-structure-to-function paradigm. They are especially interested in the structures of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCR) and the interactions with the associated ligands with the purpose of developing new drugs to regulate these interactions.