Alice Y. Ting

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Alice Yen-Ping Ting (Chinese: 丁燕萍^[1]) is Taiwanese-born American chemist. She is a professor of genetics, of biology, and by courtesy, of chemistry at Stanford University.^[2] She is also a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigator and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.^[3]

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

Ting completed her postdoctoral fellowship with 2008 Nobel Laureate Roger Y. Tsien.^[5]

Career

Ting joined the

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,^[8][9] dissecting molecular function, and potentially discovering novel disease genes.^[10][11] Ting's laboratory has developed three widely used enzymes for PL; all were engineered using directed evolution: the peroxidase APEX2,^[12][13] and the biotin ligases TurboID and miniTurbo.^[14]

In addition, Ting and her lab developed monovalent streptavidin,