Mueller Lab Members

Lab Members

Dr Manuel Müller - Reader (Associate Professor) in Chemical Biology

Manuel studied biochemistry at ETH Zurich. After a brief internship with Prof. Andrew Ellington at UT Austin in 2006, Manuel returned to ETH where he completed his PhD in protein engineering and evolution under the supervision of Prof. Donald Hilvert in 2010. For his postdoctoral work, he joined Prof. Tom Muir’s lab in Princeton where he developed and applied chemical biology tools to study chromatin modifying enzymes. In 2016, Manuel was awarded a Sir Henry Dale Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust and Royal Society to establish his lab in the Department of Chemistry at King’s College London. In 2021, he was awarded the RSC Norman Heatley Award for his contributions to "to the field of posttranslational modifications, especially the use of protein chemistry to gain insight into molecular mechanisms of epigenetics processes and cancer." In 2022, he was promoted to a Reader at King's Chemistry.

Dr Luis Guerra - Postdoc

Luis completed his Bsc in chemistry at the California Institute of Technology, where his studies focused on biophysical and spectroscopic techniques. In 2019, he received his PhD in chemistry from Princeton University under the joint supervision of Prof. Tom Muir and Prof. Haw Yang. His thesis—supported by the NSF graduate research fellowship program—centred on the development of novel spectroscopic methods to interrogate and manipulate single, freely-diffusing nanoparticles with the goal of utilising these powerful substrates as experimental platforms to probe nanoscale biological environments and the conformational fluctuations of complex biopolymers. Luis joined the Müller lab as a postdoctoral researcher in April 2023. His work focuses on the semi-synthesis and characterization of post-translationally modified p53, a critical regulatory protein in the processes of DNA repair and apoptosis. In 2024, he was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Matt (Mateusz) Hess - PhD Student

Matt completed his BSc in Biochemistry in 2019 at Royal Holloway, University of London. His Bachelor thesis focused on protein engineering of SNARE complexes under the supervision of Dr. Mikhail Soloviev. In 2019 he joined Dr. Paul Devlin's lab at Royal Holloway for his MSc by Research, where he analysed plant endophytic microbiomes using Next Generation Sequencing and Machine Learning jointly with PrepWorld Ltd. Matt was associated with SporeGen Ltd. from 2019-2020 as a research scientist, where he worked on the development of Bacillus based therapeutics for Clostridium difficile infections and development of a mucosal vaccine for COVID-19. Matt joined the Müller lab in autumn 2020, where he is set to investigate the effects of PTMs on folding and binding kinetics of a transcription factor, in collaboration with the Politis lab and Fluidic Analytics (Cambridge).

Sabrina Hossain - Joint PhD student, Borysik lab, BiPAS

Sabrina obtained her M. Sci Biochemistry at the University of Birmingham in 2019. For her master’s project, she worked in Dr Timothy Knowles’ laboratory investigating the structure of the bacterial membrane protein DsbD in its natural lipid environment, using styrene maleic acid lipid particles (SMALPs). In summer 2021, Sabrina joined the Biological Physics Across Scales Centre for Doctoral Training (BiPAS CDT) where she will be undertaking her project co-supervised by Dr Argyris Politis and Dr Manuel Müller. Sabrina’s project will be probing the conformational dynamics that underpin function in intrinsically disordered proteins including p53 using hydrogen-deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (HDX-MS) visualised with data-driven modelling.

Guljannat Ablat - PhD student, K-CSC

Guljannat completed her MSci in molecular biology and plant physiology in July 2021 at Henan University (Kaifeng, China) jointly trained with CAS Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Shanghai, China). Her Master’s project was carried out in Prof. Xinguang Zhu’s lab and focused on characterizing a putative “non-histone” demethylase protein (DEME) and elucidating its functions in rice photosynthesis. Guljannat joined the Muller Lab in autumn 2021, where she is characterizing the functions of D-amino acids in proteins.

Ruqaiya Alam - Joint PhD student, Frost lab

Ruqaiya completed her MSci in Chemistry with Biomedicine at King’s College London. During this course, her third-year dissertation project focused on exploring 99mTc- Radiotracers that target prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) receptors under the supervision of Dr Michele Ma. For her master’s project, she developed sulfur-containing compounds as substrates for the biocatalytic construction of chiral C-S bonds under the supervision of Dr Daniele Castagnolo at University College London. Soon after, Ruqaiya returned to King’s to join the labs of Prof. Chris Frost and Dr Manuel Müller as an interdisciplinary researcher to investigate metal-mediated modifications of peptides and proteins for drug discovery, primarily focusing on Chromatin.

Lewis Picken - Joint PhD student, Cobb lab

Lewis graduated from the University of York with a BSc in chemistry in 2020 before going to work in a QC pharmaceutical lab. He then joined Steven Cobb's group at Durham University for an MRes developing novel fluoroalkyl side-chains to stabilise peptoid secondary structures. His current research in the Müller lab focuses on the development of new chemoselective methods to identify post-translational modifications in proteins.

Sam Fidler - Joint PhD student, McTernan lab, KCL-Crick PhD programme

Sam received his master’s degree from Durham University in summer 2022 before joining the Müller and McTernan labs as part of a joint KCl-Crick PhD programme. His final year project was supervised by Dr Matthew Kitching, where he investigated the enantioenrichment of chiral nitrogen compounds. His PhD research is focused on the synthesis of a new generation of macrocycles, capable of acting as receptors for post-translational modifications of p53.

Hannah Coxhead - Joint PhD student MM4L, Tavassoli & Ulmschneider Labs

Hannah completed her BSc in Natural Sciences at the University of Bath specialising in Biochemistry and Pharmacology in 2023. As part of her degree, she undertook a year-long professional lab-based placement at UCB Biopharma in Belgium working in the investigative toxicology department developing a variety of complex in vitro models. This included the utilisation of microfluidic organ chips incorporating 3D liver spheroids as a platform to support drug safety evaluation. Upon returning to Bath, she completed her bachelor’s thesis in protein engineering of novel BioPROTAC constructs targeting cancer mutations. She is pursuing an interdisciplinary PhD at KCL working to establish a 3D cancer model to assess the therapeutic potential of the protein pro-drug Apoptin.

Emma Kinloch - Joint PhD student KCL/Crick, Vousden Lab @ Crick

Emma obtained her BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Manchester. She then undertook a 2-year MSc Biomedical Sciences programme at the University of Amsterdam. For one of her research projects, she investigated mechanotransduction at adherens junctions in endothelial cells under the supervision of Prof. Stephan Huveneers. In the past year she has been working as a research assistant at the Francis Crick Institute in Prof. Michael Way’s group, screening for nanobodies against the Arp2/3 complex. Her PhD project is joint between Müller and Vousden (Francis Crick Institute) and will focus on how the tumour suppressor protein p53 can dictate cellular life and death decisions.

Nishant Rai - Research Assistant

In 2020, Nishant completed his Bachelor's in Biomedical Science at the University of Queensland, Australia. At the end of his degree, he completed two projects in protein chemistry focusing on solid phase peptide synthesis of α-conotoxins under the supervision of Dr Anne Conibear at Dr Richard Clark's Peptide Chemical Biology Lab. He graduated from his Master’s in Biomedicine from Uppsala University, Sweden in 2022 where he undertook a 6-month internship on the effects of serotonin on aldosterone synthesis in adrenocortical carcinoma. His master's thesis looked at the effects of environmental pollutants PFOS, PFOA, OMC on the proliferation and invasive ability of osteosarcoma cells and overall effect on cell circadian rhythm under the guidance of Dr Wen Liu. He is currently working as a research assistant in protein chemistry in the Müller Group where he synthesizes a variety of p53 phospho-variants. These peptides would be further studied by the group to make new discoveries in understanding the role of Post-Translation Modifications in this vital tumour suppressor.

Mollie Phillips - MSci Student

Mollie is a current Msci in Chemistry with Biomedicine undergraduate student at King's College London. Her 3rd year dissertation project in this course focused on chemical methods to detect cystine oxidation, under the supervision of Dr Manuel Müller. She returned to the Müller lab for a summer research opportunity, funded by a King’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship, where she synthesised Pd(II)-Ligand complexes furnished with aryl-groups for S-arylation of cysteine residues. She is currently building on this work by varying the aryl group of the Pd(II) complexes in her Msci project, for selective modification of anticancer proteins.