Douglas Charles "Doug" Rees (born 1952) is an American biochemist, biophysicist, and structural biologist. Rees graduated from

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

with a bachelor's degree in 1974 and received a PhD in biophysics from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

in 1980. In 1982 he went to the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

. In 1989, he became a professor of chemistry at

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private university, private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small g ...

. There he is Roscoe Gilkey Dickinson Professor and Dean of graduate studies. From 1997 onwards, he has been an investigator of the

Howard Hughes Medical Institute The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is an American non-profit medical research organization headquartered in Chevy Chase, Maryland with additional facilities in Ashburn, Virginia. It was founded in 1953 by Howard Hughes, an American busin ...

. He served as the

editor Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, organization, a ...

or co-editor of the ''

Annual Review of Biophysics and Biomolecular Structure The ''Annual Review of Biophysics'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published annually by Annual Reviews. It covers all aspects of biophysics with solicited review articles. Ken A. Dill has been its editor since 2013. As of 2023, ''Annual R ...

'' (2004–2014). He examines the structure and function of metal-containing proteins, especially

nitrogenase Nitrogenases are enzymes () that are produced by certain bacteria, such as cyanobacteria (blue-green bacteria) and rhizobacteria. These enzymes are responsible for the reduction of nitrogen (N2) to ammonia (NH3). Nitrogenases are the only fa ...

in biological nitrogen fixation, and membrane proteins that carry out ATP-dependent transport through membranes (e.g.

ABC transporters The ABC transporters, ATP synthase (ATP)-binding cassette transporters are a transport system superfamily that is one of the largest and possibly one of the oldest gene families. It is represented in all extant phyla, from prokaryotes to huma ...

). To do this, his group uses

X-ray crystallography X-ray crystallography is the experimental science of determining the atomic and molecular structure of a crystal, in which the crystalline structure causes a beam of incident X-rays to Diffraction, diffract in specific directions. By measuring th ...

. His interest in nitrogenase began in

William Lipscomb William Nunn Lipscomb Jr. (December 9, 1919April 14, 2011) was a Nobel Prize-winning People of the United States, American Inorganic chemistry, inorganic and Organic chemistry, organic chemist working in nuclear magnetic resonance, theoretical ch ...

's laboratory. In 2015 he received the FA Cotton Medal, and in 2020 he was awarded the

Gregori Aminoff Prize The Gregori Aminoff Prize is an international prize awarded since 1979 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in the field of crystallography, rewarding "a documented, individual contribution in the field of crystallography, including areas concer ...

. He is a member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

, and was a Sloan Research Fellow.

Writings (selected)

* Edited with Daniel E. Atkinson, Steven G. Clarke, David S. Barkley: Dynamic models in biochemistry: a workbook of computer simulations using electronic spreadsheets, Benjamin Cummings 1987 * as editor: Membrane proteins, Amsterdam / Boston: Academic Press, 2003, * with JB Howard: Nitrogenase: a nucleotide-dependent molecular switch, Annual Review of Biochemistry, volume 63, 1994, pp. 235–264. * with MH Stowell: Structure and stability of membrane proteins, Advances in Protein Chemistry, Volume 46, 1995, pp. 279–311 * with JB Howard: Structural Basis of Biological Nitrogen Fixation, Chemical Reviews, Volume 96, 1996, pp. 2965–2982 * with George Feher, et al.: Light-induced structural changes in photosynthetic reaction center: implications for mechanism of electron-proton transfer, Science, volume 276, 1997, pp. 812–816 * Great metalloclusters in enzymology, Annual Review of Biochemistry, Volume 71, 2002, pp. 221–246. * with JB Howard: Nitrogenase: standing at the crossroads, Current Opinion in Chemical Biology, Volume 4, 2002, pp. 559–566 * with F. Akif Tezcan, Chad A. Haynes, Mika Y. Walton, Susana Andrade, Olvier Einsle, James B. Howard: Structural basis of biological nitrogen fixation, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A, Volume 363, 2005, pp. 971–984 * with FA Tezcan, JT Kaiser, D. Mustafi, MY Walton, JB Howard: Nitrogenase Complexes: Multiple Docking Sites for a Nucleotide Switch Protein, Science, Volume 309, 2005, pp. 1377–1380 * with Chris Gandhi: Opening the molecular floodgates, Science, volume 321, 2008, pp. 1166–1167 * with NS Kadaba, et al.: The high-affinity E. coli methionine ABC transporter: structure and allosteric regulation, Science, volume 321, 2008, pp. 250–253 * with E. Johnson, O. Lewinson: ABC Transporters: The Power to Change, Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, Volume 10, 2009, pp. 218–227 * with JB Howard, et al.: Ligand binding to the FeMo-cofactor: structures of CO-bound and reactivated nitrogenase, Science, volume 345, 2014, pp. 1620–1623

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rees, Douglas Living people Structural biologists California Institute of Technology faculty 1952 births University of California, Los Angeles faculty Yale College alumni Harvard University alumni Annual Reviews (publisher) editors Searle Scholars Program recipients