The research in Dr. Jianlin (Jack) Cheng's BML lab at the University of Missouri-Columbia focuses on developing machine learning, deep learning, and artificial intelligence (AI) methods to analyze biological and medical data and address fundamental problems in biological and medical sciences. Currently, we are developing bioinformatics algorithms and tools for protein structure, interaction, and function prediction, protein and drug design, biological network modeling, and omics data analysis. Our research is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE), and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Our AI and bioinformatics tools, web services, and datasets are freely available. Our MULTICOM suite for the prediction of protein structure and structural features were ranked among the best methods in the last several community-wide biennial Critical Assessments of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction (CASP7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16) in 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024), respectively.
The citations to our research papers according to Google Scholar
In 2024, during the latest CASP16 competition, our MULTICOM predictors were ranked among the top in five major categories: (a) protein complex structure prediction (no. 1 in Phase 0 prediction without stoichiometry information, (b) Phase 1 protein complex structure prediction with stoichiometry information (no. 3), (c) tertiary structure prediction (no. 2), (d) protein model accuracy estimation (no. 2 in global fold accuracy estimation and no. 1 in ranking homo-multimer structures), and (e) protein-ligand structure (pose) and binding affinity prediction (no. 5).