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)
- Alisa Dengler (PhD student, 2025 - present)
- MSc, Technical University of Munich
- Lara Lunglmeier (MSc thesis student)
- Simon Sapozhkov (BSc thesis student)
Former group members:
- Swasti Rawal
- current position: PhD student, Medical University of Graz
News
2026
- March: the IDR-ome paper is accepted for publication :-) Congratulations to Iva Pritišanac, Julie Forman-Kay, Alan Moses, and all co-authors!
- March: our Helmholtz AI grant GAINMR is funded! Congratulations to the team involving Reid, Iva Pritišanac, Michael Heinzinger, Michael Sattler at HMGU and Nils Lakomek, Birgit Strodel, and Stefan Kesselheim at FZ Jülich!
- March: Sandro Kuppel starts his PhD in the MUDS program with Iva Pritišanac
- February: Reid joins the Computational Health Centre as an affiliated PI and gives a seminar at the Faculty Club. Thank you for the invitation! we are looking forward to many stimulating discussions and collaborations!
2025
- December: the group celebrates the holiday season with a festive dinner at Garching's Gasthof Neuwirt. Prost!
- December: Anastasia Sobol starts her PhD in the MUDS program with Iva Pritišanac. Welcome, Anastasia!
- November: Reid serves as the external examiner for a DPhil Viva at the University of Oxford. Congratulations, Neel, on your successful DPhil!
- October: Alisa attends the fantastic 2025 EMBL Structural Bioinformatics course
- October: Lara stays on to complete her MSc thesis
- August: Lara Lunglmeier joins the lab as a MSc intern. Welcome, Lara!
- July: Reid gives an invited seminar to the ProtPath graduate school at the University of Freiburg. Thank you for the invitation and hospitality, Pitter!
- July: Alisa Dengler joins the lab as a PhD student. Welcome, Alisa!
- June: Swasti's work on the assembly and regulation of the caspase-9 filament is preprinted on bioRxiv. Read more here, and congratulations to all co-authors!
- 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
- November: The PIs from the Molecular Targets and Therapeutics Center at Helmholtz Munich meet in Bad Tölz (Bavaria) to discuss current and future research plans.
- November: Reid visits collaborators at the University of Oxford and gives a talk at the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery.
- November: We say goodbye to Simon after his productive internship. Best wishes for your studies at TUM!
- September: Simon Sapozhkov joins the lab for his Bachelor's internship in Biochemistry.
- July: 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!
- June: Reid gives a talk about caspase-9 and the apoptosome at the GRC on Proteolytic Enzymes and Their Inhibitors in Il Ciocco, Italy.
- June: Desika attends the Helmholtz AI Conference in Düsseldorf, Germany
- March: Reid and Desika 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
- March: Đesika Kolarić joins as a PhD student. Welcome to the lab, Jess!
- March: the lab officially opens its doors at the Bavarian NMR Center in Garching!
Contact
