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Alice Yen-Ping Ting (Chinese: 丁燕萍) is a Taiwanese-born American chemist. She is a professor of genetics, of biology, and by courtesy, of chemistry at Stanford University. She is also a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigator and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Early life and education

Alice Ting was born in Taiwan and immigrated to the United States when she was three years old. She was raised in Texas and attended the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science (TAMS). She received her B.S. in chemistry from Harvard University in 1996, working with Nobel laureate E.J. Corey. She completed her Ph.D. with Peter G. Schultz at the University of California, Berkeley in 2000.

Ting completed her postdoctoral fellowship with 2008 Nobel Laureate Roger Y. Tsien.

Career

Ting joined the MIT Chemistry Department in 2002 where she was the Ellen Swallow Richards Professor until 2016. In 2016, she moved to Stanford University, Departments of Genetics, of Biology, and, by courtesy, of Chemistry. Her research harnesses the power of directed evolution and synthetic organic chemistry to develop novel methods for studying the cell. She has received a number of awards, including a 2008 NIH Director's Pioneer Award, a 2010 Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society, an NIH Transformative R01 Award (both 2013 and 2018), the McKnight Technological Innovations in Neuroscience Award, the Technology Review TR35 Award, the Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship, the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science in 2012. Ting has been an investigator of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub since 2017. Ting was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2023.

Research

Ting and her lab are credited with developing several influential techniques, some of which have been broadly adopted by academic and industrial researchers across the world. Proximity labeling (PL) is a method for discovery of molecules that reside within a few nanometers (1-5 nm) of a designated molecule of interest, within living cells or organisms. The technique involves fusing a promiscuous labeling enzyme to the molecule of interest and then adding a small-molecule substrate that enables the enzyme to covalently tag any (protein or RNA) molecule within its immediate vicinity. PL is a powerful method for elucidating signaling networks, dissecting molecular function, and potentially discovering novel disease genes. Ting's laboratory has developed three widely used enzymes for PL; all were engineered using directed evolution: the peroxidase APEX2, and the biotin ligases TurboID and miniTurbo.

In addition, Ting and her lab developed monovalent streptavidin, site-specific biotinylation in mammalian cells, small monovalent quantum dots for single molecule imaging, APEX2 as a genetic tag for electron microscopy (analogous to green fluorescent protein but visible by electron microscopy), split horseradish peroxidase for visualization of synapses in vivo, FLARE (fast light- and activity-regulated expression) for gaining genetic access to activated neural ensembles, SPARK (specific protein association tool giving transcriptional readout with rapid kinetics) for transcriptional readout of protein-protein interactions, and PRIME (probe incorporation mediated by enzymes) – a protein labeling technique that enables scientists to capitalize on the brightness, photostability, small size, and chemical diversity of small-molecule probes as an alternative to green fluorescent protein.

References

1. "10名华裔入选美国国家科学院" [10 Chinese-Americans elected as National Academy of Sciences members]. Bureau of International Information Programs, United States Department of State. 2023-05-15. Archived from the original on 2023-05-17. Retrieved 2023-05-17.
2. "Alice Ting | Department of Biology". biology.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
3. ^ "2023 NAS Election". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 2023-05-03.
4. "Alice Ting". Vilcek Foundation. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
5. "Catching them red handed: Prof. A. Ting & Prof. J. Zhang". NCCR in Chemical Biology. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
6. 2008 NIH Director's Pioneer Award Recipients Archived 2009-01-13 at the Wayback Machine retrieved online: 2009-05-12
7. "Professor Alice Ting wins Vilcek Foundation Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science". MIT News. 14 February 2012. Retrieved 2015-11-12.
8. Lobingier, BT (2017). "An Approach to Spatiotemporally Resolve Protein Interaction Networks in Living Cells". Cell. 169 (2): 350–360.e12. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2017.03.022. PMC 5616215. PMID 28388416.
9. Paek, J (2017). "Multidimensional Tracking of GPCR Signaling via Peroxidase-Catalyzed Proximity Labeling". Cell. 169 (2): 338–349.e11. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2017.03.028. PMC 5514552. PMID 28388415.
10. Han, S (2018). "Proximity labeling: spatially resolved proteomic mapping for neurobiology". Current Opinion in Neurobiology. 50: 17–23. doi:10.1016/j.conb.2017.10.015. PMC 6726430. PMID 29125959.
11. Chen, CL (2017). "Proximity-dependent labeling methods for proteomic profiling in living cells". Wiley Interdiscip Rev Dev Biol. 6 (4): e272. doi:10.1002/wdev.272. PMC 5553119. PMID 28387482.
12. Lam, SS (2015). "Directed evolution of APEX2 for electron microscopy and proximity labeling". Nature Methods. 12 (1): 51–4. doi:10.1038/nmeth.3179. PMC 4296904. PMID 25419960.
13. Rhee, HW (2013). "Proteomic mapping of mitochondria in living cells via spatially restricted enzymatic tagging". Science. 339 (6125): 1328–1331. Bibcode:2013Sci...339.1328R. doi:10.1126/science.1230593. PMC 3916822. PMID 23371551.
14. Branon, TC (2018). "Efficient proximity labeling in living cells and organisms with TurboID". Nature Biotechnology. 36 (9): 880–887. doi:10.1038/nbt.4201. PMC 6126969. PMID 30125270.
15. Howarth, M (2006). "A monovalent streptavidin with a single femtomolar biotin binding site". Nature Methods. 3 (4): 267–73. doi:10.1038/nmeth861. PMC 2576293. PMID 16554831.
16. Howarth, M (2005). "Targeting quantum dots to surface proteins in living cells with biotin ligase". PNAS. 102 (21): 7583–8. Bibcode:2005PNAS..102.7583H. doi:10.1073/pnas.0503125102. PMC 1129026. PMID 15897449.
17. Howarth, M (2008). "Monovalent, reduced-size quantum dots for imaging receptors on living cells". Nature Methods. 5 (5): 397–9. doi:10.1038/nmeth.1206. PMC 2637151. PMID 18425138.
18. Martell, JD (2012). "Engineered ascorbate peroxidase as a genetically encoded reporter for electron microscopy". Nature Biotechnology. 30 (11): 1143–8. doi:10.1038/nbt.2375. PMC 3699407. PMID 23086203.
19. Martell, JD (2016). "A split horseradish peroxidase for the detection of intercellular protein-protein interactions and sensitive visualization of synapses". Nature Biotechnology. 34 (7): 774–80. doi:10.1038/nbt.3563. PMC 4942342. PMID 27240195.
20. Wang, W (2017). "A light- and calcium-gated transcription factor for imaging and manipulating activated neurons". Nature Biotechnology. 35 (9): 864–871. doi:10.1038/nbt.3909. PMC 5595644. PMID 28650461.
21. Kim, MW (2017). "Time-gated detection of protein-protein interactions with transcriptional readout". eLife. 6. doi:10.7554/eLife.30233. PMC 5708895. PMID 29189201.

External links

• TR35
• Ting Laboratory website at Stanford
• Alice Y. Ting publications indexed by Google Scholar

• American women chemists
• Harvard College alumni
• Living people
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science faculty
• American organic chemists
• Taiwanese emigrants to the United States
• University of California, Berkeley alumni
• Taiwanese chemists
• Stanford University Department of Chemistry faculty
• 21st-century American women