Pioneers: Growing Together With Molecular Dynamics Simulation and NMR for Studying Biomacromolecules in China

I am a Professor of Biophysics at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). I graduated from the Department of Physics, USTC, majoring in Biophysics, in 1965. From 1965 to 1970, I worked as an assistant researcher at the Institute of Chinese Medicine. I joined USTC as an Assistant Professor in 1970 and became a visiting scholar in the Department of Physical Chemistry at the University of Roma from 1979 to1981. My studies on computational biology were mentored by Professor De Santis and supported by the Ministry of Education of China. My studies on bio-NMR were mentored by Professor F. Conti at University of Roma while I simultaneously studied at the CNRS Structural Chemistry Laboratory in Italy. I returned to USTC in 1981 and established a multidisciplinary research team. In 1985 and 1990, I visited the Department of Physical Chemistry, University of Groningen in the Netherlands for six months, under the guidance of Professor H.J.C. Berendsen and Dr. W.F. Van Gunsteren to learn molecular dynamics (MD) simulation of protein and under the guidance of Professor R. Kaptein and Dr. R. Boelens to learn heteronuclear multidimensional NMR experiments for structure determination of proteins in solution. Our laboratory is the first research group to do MD simulation on protein in China and is also one of the pioneer laboratories using NMR to study protein structure in solution in China.