BioSciences

Illustration by Ilenne Del Valle/Rice University

Ordering in? Plants are way ahead of you

Dissolved carbon in soil can quench plants' ability to communicate with soil microbes, allowing plants to fine-tune their relationships with symbionts. Experiments show how synthetic biology tools developed at Rice University can help understand environmental controls on agricultural productivity.

Caroline Ajo-Franklin joined Rice University as a professor of biosciences with funding from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

CPRIT grant bolsters Rice biosciences

Rice University recruits synthetic biologist Caroline Ajo-Franklin with a $6 million grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas to bolster the university’s cutting-edge Systems, Synthetic and Physical Biology program.

A structural view of the light-sensing part of PixJ from the side and above captured through X-ray crystallography demonstrates changes in the signaling protein when excited by light. The protein, part of the phytochromes responsible for letting plants sense the presence of light, was one of the first analyzed by researchers at Rice and elsewhere at the upgraded laser at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. (Credit: Jonathan Clinger/Rice University)

X-rays show how light transforms photosynthesis ‘switch’

Researchers at Rice and their colleagues get their first detailed look at how plant proteins reconfigure themselves when exposed to light.

The caduceus, often depicted as a symbol of medicine, and a cohesin protein.

Snake-like proteins can wrangle DNA

Theoretical simulations at Rice University suggest structural maintenance of chromosome proteins coil not only around each other but also around the strands of DNA they help manipulate. These strands are formed into loops that regulate transcription and other cellular processes.