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 protein structure prediction methods.
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.
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)
- Đesika Kolarić (PhD student, 2024 - present)
- MSc, University of Zagreb
Former group members:
- Swasti Rawal
- current position: PhD student, Medical University of Graz
Areas of Expertise
Structural Biology Biochemistry Biophysics Computational Biology Intrinsically disordered proteins NMR spectroscopy AlphaFold2 Molecular chaperones Proteolytic enzymes
Professional Background
BSc
University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
Supervisor: Prof. John L. Markley at the NMRFAM
PhD
University of Oxford, UK
Supervisors: Prof. Justin L. P. Benesch, Prof. Andrew J. Baldwin
National Institutes of Health, USA
Supervisor: Dr. Adriaan Bax, FRS
Banting Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Toronto, Canada
Department of Biochemistry
Supervisor: Prof. Lewis E. Kay, FRS
Postdoctoral Scientist
Medical University of Graz, Austria
Group Leader at Helmholtz Munich
Helmholtz Investigator Grant
Molecular Targets and Therapeutics Center
News
2025
-
April: Reid is awarded funding from TUM's Global Incentive Fund
- March: Zihao Wang's paper on HSPB7 and Filamin C is accepted in Nature Communications! Read the preprint here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.05.574393v1
2024
- 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!
- 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!
Contact
reid.alderson[at]helmholtz-munich.de
