Welcome to the Mueller lab @ King's College London
Alumni
Dr Greg Hughes - Postdoc
Greg studied chemistry with molecular medicine at the University of Hull. For his MChem project he researched porphyrin-protein conjugates in Professor Ross Boyle’s lab. Greg moved to UEA in 2015 to carry out his PhD on a collaborative drug discovery project under the supervision of Dr Andrew Chantry, Professor Philip Bulman Page, Professor Andrew Hemmings and Professor Richard Stephenson. His thesis was based on the development of novel WWP2 ubiquitin ligase inhibitors using biophysical, structural and synthetic approaches. During his PhD, he spent time at Charnwood Molecular as part of his BBSRC iCASE placement. After completing his doctoral studies in 2019, he stayed in the Chantry lab as a research associate continuing the ubiquitin ligase drug discovery project. Greg moved to the Muller lab as a postdoctoral researcher in February 2021, where he is working on developing novel nucleophilic probes to capture protein methyl esters.
Tianze Zhang - PhD Student, CSC
Zhang Tianze is from China where she obtained her bachelors degree in pharmaceutical sciences from Tianjin University. Her graduation thesis was carried out in Prof. Kenneth Woycechowsky's lab on the purification of His-tagged proteins. She joined the Mueller lab in Sept. 2017 and her project is about identifying the structural and functional consequences of protein backbone modifications.
Current Position: Posdoc, Tate Group, Francis Crick Institute
Jasmine Wyatt - Joint PhD Student Tavassoli Lab, BRC
Jasmine obtained her BSc in Biochemistry followed by a MRes in Translational Cancer Medicine from King’s College London. Jasmine joined the Müller lab in 2017 where she will be investigating the mechanism of action of a cancer-selective toxin. Specifically, her research focuses on the functional consequences of protein phosphorylation. To do this, she is also working with Professor Mahvash Tavassoli (Molecular Oncology) wherein she will be using state-of-the-art protein transduction methodologies to introduce semi-synthetic toxin derivatives into a range of primary and metastatic cancer cell lines.
Current Position: Postdoc, Wells Lab, KCL
Dr Karola Gerecht - Postdoc (former PhD Student, LIDo)
Karola is from Germany where she obtained her M.Sc. in Biochemistry from the Technical University Munich. During a research stay with Tom Muir at Princeton, she studied the effects of histone posttranslational modifications on chromatin structure. Karola joined the Müller Lab in 2017 where she is exploring isoaspartate formation in proteins and trying to elucidate how this modification impacts protein function.
Current Position: Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Holliger Lab, LMB Cambridge
Sofia Margiola - PhD Student, Department of Chemistry
Sofia studied Chemistry at the University of Crete in Greece, where she obtained her M. Sc in Inorgranic Chemistry in 2016. Her master's thesis was carried out in Prof. Coutsolelos’ Lab in collaboration with Prof. Aukauloo at the University of Paris-Sud. She synthesized porphyrin-ruthenium complexes and explored their catalytic abilities to photo-oxidize organic substrates. She joined the Müller group in January 2017 where she is currently working on the development of a chemical approach to access site-specifically modified proteins to investigate how phosphorylation controls their structure and function.
Dr Daynea Wallock-Richards - Postdoc
Daynea studied Chemistry and Education at the University of the West Indies. She also completed a MRes degree in Biological and Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Nottingham. Her research project was carried out in Prof. Neil Thomas’ lab. Daynea then completed her doctoral studies at the University of Edinburgh in 2015 under the supervision of Prof. Dominic Campopiano. Her thesis was based on the antimicrobial properties of selected natural products and their protein targets. Daynea joined the Müller research group in 2017 where she is currently working on developing biochemical tools to study backbone modifications of proteins, particularly isoaspartyl-containing proteins.
Current Position: Science Teacher at Leigh Academies
Sarina Dhanoya - Joint PhD student, Diez-Perez lab, BiPAS
Niyaz Zaman - LIDo PhD Rotation student
Niyaz completed his BSc in Pharmacology & Molecular Genetics at King’s College London, followed by an MRes in Cancer Biology at Imperial College London. His past projects have focussed along the drug discovery and development pipeline where he has validated targets for immunotherapies, designed and developed gene therapies as well as characterising and validating the targets of chemotherapies, and designing AI/Machine Learning platforms to perform in-silico target prediction and predicting treatment responses based on tumour DNA. In Spring 2021, Niyaz joined the Müller lab on a LIDo PhD rotation to design and characterise cyclic cancer-selective toxins, in collaboration with Professor Mahvash Tavassoli (Molecular Oncology) where these cyclic toxins will be investigated in a range of primary and metastatic cancer cell lines.
Dr George Preston - Visiting Postdoc, Phillips Lab
George is a visiting postdoc from Prof. David Phillips’ group in the Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine. In the Mueller lab he is developing molecular probes to target reactive loci of proteins in human blood. The aim is to identify loci at which toxicologically-relevant covalent modifications might be found.
Current Position: Postdoc, Phillips lab @ KCL
Neev Lawton - MSci Student, KCL
Neev is an MSci Chemistry with Biomedicine student. Her third year project involved researching white-rot fungi’s enzymatic system as a bioremediation technology for ecotoxic pharmaceuticals that persist in the environment, under the supervision of Dr Leigh Aldous. In 2022, she completed an internship at BNP Paribas, working as a Global Markets Summer Analyst in their London office. Neev joined the Müller lab in September 2022 for her final-year MSci project, where she will develop a novel method for protein modification.
Sonja Schneider - Visiting MSci Student (LMU)
Maria Hancu - Visiting Student (Rice)
Maria is a fourth-year summer student from Rice University, currently pursuing a dual Bsc in Biosciences and Chemistry. In addition to her coursework, she has been studying the controlled oligomerization of short collagen triple helices in the lab of Dr. Jeffery Hartgerink. This summer, Maria will be working with Jonathan Davies to investigate the crosstalk between post-translational modifications of p53.
Builqis Jahan - MSci student
Builqis is a final-year MSci Chemistry student, whose third-year project involved researching mechanisms of resistance in Gram-negative ESKAPE pathogens, and novel therapeutic treatments, under the supervision of Dr Sarah Barry. She completed an undergraduate research fellowship with Dr Muller in the summer of 2021 where she synthesised a small library of phosphopeptides, to be fed into a p53 protein synthesis pipeline. Builqis returned to the Muller lab shortly thereafter to carry out her MSci project, where she will synthesise wild-type and site-specifically phosphorylated p53 proteins, using a novel semi-synthesis strategy.
Yasmin Gariba-Hamilton - King's MSci Student
Yasmin is currently in her final year of studying MSci Chemistry at King’s College London. She joined the Müller Group in October 2020, wherein her project focuses on the significance of the conversion of certain asparagine/aspartate residues into isoaspartate. Specifically, she will be looking for this change in a protein with identified potential for isoAsp conversion, and considering the impact on its functionality upon this alteration.
Olga Tereszkowska-Kaminska - Undergraduate Student, KCL
Current Position: MSc student at KCL/Crick
Florence Stoffel - KURF Student, KCL
Current Position: PhD student, ETH Zuerich, Switzerland
Rashi Benarroch - MSci and KURF Student, KCL
Current Position: PhD student at Imperial College