Alderson Lab
We are interested in intrinsically disordered protein regions and their roles in fundamental biological processes, with a focus on protein homeostasis and cell death. Our group combines experimental and computational approaches, including NMR spectroscopy, cryo-EM, structural bioinformatics, and AI-based methods for protein structure prediction.
We are interested in intrinsically disordered protein regions and their roles in fundamental biological processes, with a focus on protein homeostasis and cell death. Our group combines experimental and computational approaches, including NMR spectroscopy, cryo-EM, structural bioinformatics, and AI-based protein structure prediction methods.
About
The Alderson Lab aims to understand how proteins in the heat shock and cell death pathways sense and react to stress. Many components of these pathways oligomerize and contain intrinsically disordered regions that lack stable structures. We leverage an integrative structural biology approach that combines NMR spectroscopy, cryo-EM, and other biophysical techniques to characterize these dynamic complexes. In addition, we deploy AI-based protein structure prediction methods, with recent applications focusing on proteome-level structural bioinformatics. Ultimately, we aim to uncover the mechanisms that govern protein homeostasis and cell death, the dysregulation of which is implicated in diseases such as cancer and neurodegeneration. We seek to leverage our structural insights to identify new targets and molecular interfaces for therapeutic intervention.
Group members:
- Reid Alderson (PI)
- Emma Dehan (PhD student, 2024 - present)
- MSc, Uppsala University
- Đesika Kolarić (PhD student, 2024 - present)
- MSc, University of Zagreb
Group members
News
- 11/2024 The PIs from the Molecular Targets and Therapeutics Center at Helmholtz Munich meet in Bad Tölz (Bavaria) to discuss current and future research plans.
- 11/2024 Reid visits collaborators at the University of Oxford and gives a talk at the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery.
- 11/2024 We say goodbye to Simon after his productive internship. Best wishes for your studies at TUM!
- 10/2024 Welcome to Emma Dehan, who joins the lab as a PhD student after finishing her Master's degree at Uppsala University with an exchange at EPFL in Switzerland. Welcome to the lab, Emma! (LinkedIn: https://se.linkedin.com/in/emma-dehan-0b4889204)
- 09/2024 Simon Sapozhkov joins the lab for his Bachelor's internship in Biochemistry.
- 07/2024 Reid gives a talk about IDRs at Colorado University-Denver. Thanks, Woonghee Lee, for the invitation to share our research with the Denver NMR community!
- 06/2024 Reid gives a talk about caspase-9 and the apoptosome at the GRC on Proteolytic Enzymes and Their Inhibitors in Il Ciocco, Italy.
- 06/2024 Jess attends the Helmholtz AI Conference in Düsseldorf, Germany
- 03/2024 Reid and Jess were co-authors on a preprint about a functional map of the intrinsically disordered human proteome, or the "IDR-ome". Read more here on bioRxiv
- 03/2024 Đesika Kolarić joins as a PhD student after a productive time as a researcher with Reid and Iva Pritišanac in Graz. Welcome to the lab, Jess!
- 03/2024 the lab officially opens its doors at the Bavarian NMR Center in Garching!
Publications
See all2023 Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.
Systematic identification of conditionally folded intrinsically disordered regions by AlphaFold2
2023 Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.
Activation of caspase-9 on the apoptosome as studied by methyl-TROSY NMR
2021 Cell
NMR spectroscopy captures the essential role of dynamics in regulating biomolecular function
2019 Nat. Commun.
Local unfolding of the HSP27 monomer regulates chaperone activity
