People, papers and presentations

A paper on a Rice lab’s development of synthetic protein switches to control the flow of electrons in a cell is the subject of an online News and Views report in Nature Chemical Biology. The proteins developed by Rice synthetic chemist Joff Silberg and Systems, Synthetic and Physical Biology graduate student and lead author Joshua Atkinson, reported in Rice News, can be expressed within cells upon the introduction of one chemical and activated by another, or if placed in the cell, can simply be turned on and off. The proteins could facilitate next-generation bioelectronics.

Ruth Lopez Turley, a professor of sociology at Rice, associate director of Rice’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research and director of Rice’s Houston Education Research Consortium, was named to education policy expert Rick Hess’ 2019 list of the 200 U.S.-based scholars “who did the most last year to shape educational practice and policy.”