PEOPLE: CURRENT LAB MEMBERS

Peiqiu Chen
Graduate Student
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology
Harvard University
12 Oxford St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: (617) 384-7393
Fax: (617) 384-9228
chen29@fas.harvard.edu

Research Summary

I am interested in using physical models to describe biological systems and biological phenomena, in particular about molecular evolution and thermal adaptation for bacteria and viruses. I study the dynamics of evolution and adaptation; the interaction between mutation rate, duplication rate, as well as the number of essential genes in an organism.

Education

Harvard University Cambridge, MA
Ph.D. Physics 09/2004-Present
University of Science and Technology of China Hefei, China
B.S. Physics 06/2004

Teaching experience

Physics 1A, Mechanics, Fall 2005
Physics 1B, Electromagnetics, Fall 2006
Physics 136, Introduction to NMR, Spring 2006
Life Science 1A, Introduction to Life Sciences, Spring 2007

Publications

1. Peiqiu Chen E.I. Shakhnovich. Free energy analysis for Thermal adaptation of bacteria and viruses, theory and simulation. In preparation
2. K.B.Zeldovich, Peiqiu Chen, E.I. Shakhnovich. Protein stability imposes limits on organism complexity and speed of molecular evolution. PNAS , 104 (41): 16152-16157 (2007)
3. K.B.Zeldovich, Peiqiu Chen, B.E. Shakhnovich, E.I. Shakhnovich. A first-principles model of early evolution: Emergence of gene families, species and preferred protein folds. PLoS Computational Biology, 3 (7): e139 (2007)
4. E. E. Sigmund*, H. Cho, Peiqiu Chen, S. Byrnes and Y.-Q. Song Diffusion-based MR methods for bone structure and evolution. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, 06, 8709
5. A. Kolezuke, S. Sachedev, R. Biswas, Peiqiu Chen Therory of Quantum Impurities in Spin Liquids. Phys Rev B 74, 165114, 2006