Dr Manuel Müller

Manuel Müller studied chemistry at ETH Zurich. After a summer internship with Prof. Andrew Ellington at UT Austin in 2006, Müller 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. Since 2016, Manuel is a Sir Henry Dale Fellow of the Wellcome Trust and Royal Society in the Department of Chemistry at King’s College London.

Research Interests

Proteins are controlled by a multitude of (bio-)chemically distinct post-translational modifications. Most research in this area focuses on modifications of amino acid side-chains, but emerging evidence suggests that alterations of the polypeptide backbone can similarly control protein structure and function. The Müller lab uses a chemical biology approach to reveal when, where and how protein backbone modifications contribute to biological regulation. Foremost, we employ protein semi-synthesis to install known protein backbone modifications, allowing us to directly measure their structural and functional consequences. In parallel, we aim to develop novel proteomics platforms to uncover previously uncharacterized protein backbone modifications.