ryelab

A BCBP laboratory site

People

Principle Investigator

Hays Rye, Ph.D. – Associate Professor

Dr. Rye completed his undergraduate degree in biochemistry at Rice University and received his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley where he studied the interactions and fluorescent properties of small, nucleic acid intercalating dyes from the asymmetric cyanine family.  Dr. Rye did his post-doctoral training at Yale University Medical School with Dr. Art Horwich, studying the ATPase cycle of the GroEL-GroES chaperonin system.  Dr. Rye was an assistant professor in the Molecular Biology Department at Princeton University prior to moving his lab to Texas A&M.    Contact     

Research Staff

Chavela Carr, Ph.D. – Senior Research Scientist and Lecturer

Dr. Carr obtained her undergraduate degree in molecular biology from Vanderbilt University and received her Ph.D. at MIT where she studied the induced conformational changes in influenza hemagglutinin that permit viral membrane fusion.  Dr. Carr did her post-doctoral training at Yale Medical School with Dr. Peter Novick, where she studied the role of the yeast S/M protein Sec1 in regulating SNARE-mediated intracellular membrane fusion.  Dr. Carr was an assistant professor in the Pathology Department at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) prior to moving to Texas A&M.    Contact 

Postdoctoral Fellows

Graduate Students

Wei Gai – Graduate Student

Wei obtained his master degree in pharmacology from the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences (SIMM, CAS). During this period, he studied deacylation of long-chain fatty acyl lysine by sirtuins. Wei then worked as a research assistant studying the GPCR-arrestin signaling pathway at SIMM, CAS. He joined the Biochemistry and Biophysics PhD program in 2018. His current research interests are focused on understanding how membrane fission at the recycling endosome is controlled by nucleotide hydrolysis.   Contact

Morgan Powers – Graduate Student

Morgan obtained her undergraduate degree in cell and molecular biology with a double minor in chemistry and mathematics from King University. During her time at King, Morgan was a part of the women’s golf team. She joined the biochemistry PhD program at Texas A&M in fall of 2021. Her current research interests are in understanding how the bacterial Hsp60 chaperonin GroELS cooperates with the Hsp70 chaperone system DnaK, DnaJ, GrpE to refold poorly behaved or aggregating proteins.  Contact

Yu Chen Yang – Graduate Student

Yu Chen is from Taipei, Taiwan and obtained his bachelor’s degree in medicinal and applied chemistry from Kaohsiung Medical University in 2019. After graduating, he spent a year finishing his military training and traveling. He then worked as a research assistant at Taipei Veterans General Hospital, where he helped establish in vitro and in vivo model of X-linked juvenile retinoschisis (XLRS). Yu Chen joined the PhD program in the Biochemistry and Biophysics Department at Texas A&M University in 2021. His current research interests are focused on understanding the disaggregation mechanism of Hsp70 molecular chaperones.  Contact

Briana Martin – Graduate Student

Brianna obtained her B.S. in biochemistry with a double minor in mathematics and biology from Texas State University. Her undergraduate research focused on understanding the role of uracil-N-glycosylase in the base excision repair pathway, an important component of cellular stress response in yeast. She joined the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at Texas A&M University in 2022. Brianna is interested understanding how the structural dynamics of specific membrane proteins leads to regulated membrane fission.  Contact

Undergraduate Students

Previous Members of the Rye Lab