Scott Noble

Dr. Noble earned his B.S. in Biological Chemistry, summa cum laude, in 2004 from Tulane University in New Orleans. While there, he studied binding affinities of estrogen receptors to putative estrogen response elements. His doctoral studies in Molecular Biology were completed in 2011 at The University of Colorado Denver at Anschutz Medical Center in the laboratory of Dr. Tom Evans. During this work, he discovered diverse large RNA-protein domains that form and are regulated during egg-cell formation in the nematode worm C. elegans. These domains are related to mammalian stress granules and processing bodies and are involved in maternal mRNA repression. His current work is focused on solving the problem of oxygen sensitivity in photobiological hydrogen production. Specifically, he is studying an oxygen-tolerant hydrogenase isolated from the purple non-sulfur bacterium Rubrivivax gelatinosus. His goals are to understand how this hydrogenase matures and functions in its native host and to engineer a cyanobacterium to express this multi-subunit hydrogenase to achieve sustained photolytic hydrogen production.