Zexian Liu

dblp:46/9423 · DBLP profile ↗
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11ranked-venue papers
1as first author
8since 2021 · last 2025
0000-0001-9698-0610ORCID · corroborated

Domains — the database's venue-derived domains; a paper can count in several

Applied, interdisciplinary, general and emerging computing · 9 · 1 first-author · 6 since 2021Artificial intelligence and machine learning · 1 · 1 since 2021Graphics, computer vision, multimedia, augmented reality and games · 1 · 1 since 2021Theory of computation · 1 · 1 since 2021
YearPublicationVenuePosition
2025 3D Dental Model Segmentation with Geometrical Boundary Preserving
abstract
3D intraoral scan mesh is widely used in digital dentistry diagnosis, segmenting 3D intraoral scan mesh is a critical preliminary task. Numerous approaches have been devised for precise tooth segmentation. Currently, the deep learning-based methods are capable of the high accuracy segmentation of crown. However, the segmentation accuracy at the junction between the crown and the gum is still below average. Existing down-sampling methods are unable to effectively preserve the geometric details at the junction. To address these problems, we propose CrossTooth, a boundary-preserving segmentation method that combines 3D mesh selective downsampling to retain more vertices at the tooth-gingiva area, along with cross-modal discriminative boundary features extracted from multi-view rendered images, enhancing the geometric representation of the segmentation network. Using a point network as a backbone and incorporating image complementary features, CrossTooth significantly improves segmentation accuracy, as demonstrated by experiments on a public intraoral scan dataset. The source code is available at https://github.com/XiShuFan/CrossTooth_CVPR2025
Shufan Xi, Zexian Liu, Junlin Chang, Aimin Hao
CVPR2
2025 Inferring kinase-phosphosite regulation from phosphoproteome-enriched cancer multi-omics datasets
abstract
Phosphorylation in eukaryotic cells plays a key role in regulating cell signaling and disease progression. Despite the ability to detect thousands of phosphosites in a single experiment using high-throughput technologies, the kinases responsible for regulating these sites are largely unidentified. To solve this, we collected the quantitative data at the transcriptional, protein, and phosphorylation levels of 10 159 samples from 23 tumor datasets and 15 adjacent normal tissue datasets. Our analysis aimed to uncover the potential impact and linkage of kinase-phosphosite (KPS) pairs through experimental evidence in publications and prediction tools commonly used. We discovered that both experimentally validated and tool-predicted KPS pairs were enriched in groups where there is a significant correlation between kinase expression/phosphorylation level and the phosphorylation level of phosphosite. This suggested that a quantitative correlation could infer the KPS interconnections. Furthermore, the Spearman's correlation coefficient for these pairs were notably higher in tumor samples, indicating that these regulatory interactions are particularly pronounced in tumors. Consequently, building on the KPS correlations of different datasets as predictive features, we have developed an innovative approach that employed an oversampling method combined with and XGBoost algorithm (SMOTE-XGBoost) to predict potential kinase-specific phosphorylation sites in proteins. Moreover, the computed correlations and predictions of kinase-phosphosite interconnections were integrated into the eKPI database (https://ekpi.omicsbio.info/). In summary, our study could provide helpful information and facilitate further research on the regulatory relationship between kinases and phosphosites.
Haoyang Cheng, Zhuoran Liang, Yijin Wu, Bijin Cao, Zexian Liu
Briefings Bioinform.9
2024 A nonmonotone accelerated proximal gradient method with variable stepsize strategy for nonsmooth and nonconvex minimization problems
Hongwei Liu 0001, Zexian Liu
J. Glob. Optim.3
2023 dSCOPE: a software to detect sequences critical for liquid-liquid phase separation
abstract
Membrane-based cells are the fundamental structural and functional units of organisms, while evidences demonstrate that liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) is associated with the formation of membraneless organelles, such as P-bodies, nucleoli and stress granules. Many studies have been undertaken to explore the functions of protein phase separation (PS), but these studies lacked an effective tool to identify the sequence segments that critical for LLPS. In this study, we presented a novel software called dSCOPE (http://dscope.omicsbio.info) to predict the PS-driving regions. To develop the predictor, we curated experimentally identified sequence segments that can drive LLPS from published literature. Then sliding sequence window based physiological, biochemical, structural and coding features were integrated by random forest algorithm to perform prediction. Through rigorous evaluation, dSCOPE was demonstrated to achieve satisfactory performance. Furthermore, large-scale analysis of human proteome based on dSCOPE showed that the predicted PS-driving regions enriched various protein post-translational modifications and cancer mutations, and the proteins which contain predicted PS-driving regions enriched critical cellular signaling pathways. Taken together, dSCOPE precisely predicted the protein sequence segments critical for LLPS, with various helpful information visualized in the webserver to facilitate LLPS-related research.
Kai Yu 0011, Haoyang Cheng, Huai-Qiang Ju, Zhixiang Zuo, Qi Zhao 0009, Shiyang Kang, Zexian Liu
Briefings Bioinform.11
2022 Multi-modal optimization to identify personalized biomarkers for disease prediction of individual patients with cancer
abstract
Finding personalized biomarkers for disease prediction of patients with cancer remains a massive challenge in precision medicine. Most methods focus on one subnetwork or module as a network biomarker; however, this ignores the early warning capabilities of other modules with different configurations of biomarkers (i.e. multi-modal personalized biomarkers). Identifying such modules would not only predict disease but also provide effective therapeutic drug target information for individual patients. To solve this problem, we developed a novel model (denoted multi-modal personalized dynamic network biomarkers (MMPDNB)) based on a multi-modal optimization mechanism and personalized dynamic network biomarker (PDNB) theory, which can provide multiple modules of personalized biomarkers and unveil their multi-modal properties. Using the genomics data of patients with breast or lung cancer from The Cancer Genome Atlas database, we validated the effectiveness of the MMPDNB model. The experimental results showed that compared with other advanced methods, MMPDNB can more effectively predict the critical state with the highest early warning signal score during cancer development. Furthermore, MMPDNB more significantly identified PDNBs containing driver and biomarker genes specific to cancer tissues. More importantly, we validated the biological significance of multi-modal PDNBs, which could provide effective drug targets of individual patients as well as markers for predicting early warning signals of the critical disease state. In conclusion, multi-modal optimization is an effective method to identify PDNBs and offers a new perspective for understanding tumor heterogeneity in cancer precision medicine.
Jing J. Liang, Zong-Wei Li, Caitong Yue, Zexian Liu, Weifeng Guo
Briefings Bioinform.6
2022 DrugCVar: a platform for evidence-based drug annotation for genetic variants in cancer
abstract
MOTIVATION: Targeted therapy for cancer-related genetic variants is critical for precision medicine. Although several databases including The Clinical Interpretation of Variants in Cancer (CIViC), The Oncology Knowledge Base (OncoKB), The Cancer Genome Interpreter (CGI) and My Cancer Genome (MCG) provide clinical interpretations of variants in cancer, the clinical evidence was limited and miscellaneous. In this study, we developed the DrugCVar database, which integrated our manually curated cancer variant-drug targeting evidence from literature and the interpretations from the public resources. RESULTS: In total, 7830 clinical evidences for cancer variant-drug targeting were integrated and classified into 10 evidence tiers. Searching and browsing functions were provided for quick queries of cancer variant-drug targeting evidence. Also, batch annotation module was developed for user-provided massive genetic variants in various formats. Details, such as the mutation function, location of the variants in gene and protein structures and mutation statistics of queried genes in various tumor types, were also provided for further investigations. Thus, DrugCVar could serve as a comprehensive annotation tool to interpret potential drugs for cancer variants especially the massive ones from clinical cancer genomics studies. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: The database is available at http://drugcvar.omicsbio.info. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Zhikai Qian, Kai Yu 0011, Yongqiang Zheng, Qi Zhao 0009, Zexian Liu
Bioinform.9
2021 iCysMod: an integrative database for protein cysteine modifications in eukaryotes
abstract
As important post-translational modifications, protein cysteine modifications (PCMs) occurring at cysteine thiol group play critical roles in the regulation of various biological processes in eukaryotes. Due to the rapid advancement of high-throughput proteomics technologies, a large number of PCM events have been identified but remain to be curated. Thus, an integrated resource of eukaryotic PCMs will be useful for the research community. In this work, we developed an integrative database for protein cysteine modifications in eukaryotes (iCysMod), which curated and hosted 108 030 PCM events for 85 747 experimentally identified sites on 31 483 proteins from 48 eukaryotes for 8 types of PCMs, including oxidation, S-nitrosylation (-SNO), S-glutathionylation (-SSG), disulfide formation (-SSR), S-sulfhydration (-SSH), S-sulfenylation (-SOH), S-sulfinylation (-SO2H) and S-palmitoylation (-S-palm). Then, browse and search options were provided for accessing the dataset, while various detailed information about the PCM events was well organized for visualization. With human dataset in iCysMod, the sequence features around the cysteine modification sites for each PCM type were analyzed, and the results indicated that various types of PCMs presented distinct sequence recognition preferences. Moreover, different PCMs can crosstalk with each other to synergistically orchestrate specific biological processes, and 37 841 PCM events involved in 119 types of PCM co-occurrences at the same cysteine residues were finally obtained. Taken together, we anticipate that the database of iCysMod would provide a useful resource for eukaryotic PCMs to facilitate related researches, while the online service is freely available at http://icysmod.omicsbio.info.
Panqin Wang, Ben Cheng, Tian Shao, Zexian Liu, Zhenlong Wang
Briefings Bioinform.8
2021 gutMEGA: a database of the human gut MEtaGenome Atlas
abstract
The gut microbiota plays important roles in human health through regulating both physiological homeostasis and disease emergence. The accumulation of metagenomic sequencing studies enables us to better understand the temporal and spatial variations of the gut microbiota under different physiological and pathological conditions. However, it is inconvenient for scientists to query and retrieve published data; thus, a comprehensive resource for the quantitative gut metagenome is urgently needed. In this study, we developed gut MEtaGenome Atlas (gutMEGA), a well-annotated comprehensive database, to curate and host published quantitative gut microbiota datasets from Homo sapiens. By carefully curating the gut microbiota composition, phenotypes and experimental information, gutMEGA finally integrated 59 132 quantification events for 6457 taxa at seven different levels (kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species) under 776 conditions. Moreover, with various browsing and search functions, gutMEGA provides a fast and simple way for users to obtain the relative abundances of intestinal microbes among phenotypes. Overall, gutMEGA is a convenient and comprehensive resource for gut metagenome research, which can be freely accessed at http://gutmega.omicsbio.info.
Kai Yu 0011, Qi Zhao 0009, Zexian Liu, Xiaoxing Li
Briefings Bioinform.9
2020 Deep learning based prediction of reversible HAT/HDAC-specific lysine acetylation
abstract
Protein lysine acetylation regulation is an important molecular mechanism for regulating cellular processes and plays critical physiological and pathological roles in cancers and diseases. Although massive acetylation sites have been identified through experimental identification and high-throughput proteomics techniques, their enzyme-specific regulation remains largely unknown. Here, we developed the deep learning-based protein lysine acetylation modification prediction (Deep-PLA) software for histone acetyltransferase (HAT)/histone deacetylase (HDAC)-specific acetylation prediction based on deep learning. Experimentally identified substrates and sites of several HATs and HDACs were curated from the literature to generate enzyme-specific data sets. We integrated various protein sequence features with deep neural network and optimized the hyperparameters with particle swarm optimization, which achieved satisfactory performance. Through comparisons based on cross-validations and testing data sets, the model outperformed previous studies. Meanwhile, we found that protein-protein interactions could enrich enzyme-specific acetylation regulatory relations and visualized this information in the Deep-PLA web server. Furthermore, a cross-cancer analysis of acetylation-associated mutations revealed that acetylation regulation was intensively disrupted by mutations in cancers and heavily implicated in the regulation of cancer signaling. These prediction and analysis results might provide helpful information to reveal the regulatory mechanism of protein acetylation in various biological processes to promote the research on prognosis and treatment of cancers. Therefore, the Deep-PLA predictor and protein acetylation interaction networks could provide helpful information for studying the regulation of protein acetylation. The web server of Deep-PLA could be accessed at http://deeppla.cancerbio.info.
Kai Yu 0011, Yimeng Du, Xinjiao Gao, Qi Zhao 0009, Xiaoxing Li, Zexian Liu
Briefings Bioinform.9
2020 CrossICC: iterative consensus clustering of cross-platform gene expression data without adjusting batch effect
abstract
Unsupervised clustering of high-throughput gene expression data is widely adopted for cancer subtyping. However, cancer subtypes derived from a single dataset are usually not applicable across multiple datasets from different platforms. Merging different datasets is necessary to determine accurate and applicable cancer subtypes but is still embarrassing due to the batch effect. CrossICC is an R package designed for the unsupervised clustering of gene expression data from multiple datasets/platforms without the requirement of batch effect adjustment. CrossICC utilizes an iterative strategy to derive the optimal gene signature and cluster numbers from a consensus similarity matrix generated by consensus clustering. This package also provides abundant functions to visualize the identified subtypes and evaluate subtyping performance. We expected that CrossICC could be used to discover the robust cancer subtypes with significant translational implications in personalized care for cancer patients. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: The package is implemented in R and available at GitHub (https://github.com/bioinformatist/CrossICC) and Bioconductor (http://bioconductor.org/packages/release/bioc/html/CrossICC.html) under the GPL v3 License.
Qi Zhao 0009, Yu Sun 0050, Hongwan Zhang, Xingyang Li, Kaiyu Zhu, Zexian Liu, Jian Ren 0002, Zhixiang Zuo
Briefings Bioinform.7
2013 Systematic analysis of the Plk-mediated phosphoregulation in eukaryotes
abstract
Substantial evidence has confirmed that Polo-like kinases (Plks) play a crucial role in a variety of cellular processes via phosphorylation-mediated signaling transduction. Identification of Plk phospho-binding proteins and phosphorylation substrates is fundamental for elucidating the molecular mechanisms of Plks. Here, we present an integrative approach for the analysis of Plk-specific phospho-binding and phosphorylation sites (p-sites) in proteins. From the currently available phosphoproteomic data, we predicted tens of thousands of potential Plk phospho-binding and phosphorylation sites in eukaryotes, respectively. Furthermore, statistical analysis suggested that Plk phospho-binding proteins are more closely implicated in mitosis than their phosphorylation substrates. Additional computational analysis together with in vitro and in vivo experimental assays demonstrated that human Mis18B is a novel interacting partner of Plk1, while pT14 and pS48 of Mis18B were identified as phospho-binding sites. Taken together, this systematic analysis provides a global landscape of the complexity and diversity of potential Plk-mediated phosphoregulation, and the prediction results can be helpful for further experimental investigation.
Zexian Liu, Jian Ren 0002, Xuebiao Yao, Changjiang Jin, Yu Xue 0001
Briefings Bioinform.1