Dr Stephen Muench is a lecturer in membrane biology at the University of Leeds. His group primarily us Electron Microscopy (EM) to study the structure and mechanism of protein complexes, with a special interest in membrane proteins. His group work on a range of systems from ion channels to developing new biosensors.
He has been working on new ways to stabilise and study membrane proteins including the use of styrene maleic acid (SMA) co polymers to extract proteins with their closely associated lipids. Complementary to this his group are also developing new technologies to rapidly mix and freeze EM grids to trap different conformational states in the low ms time-frame (>10ms). This allows us to trap states that are poorly represented at equilibrium but may be important conformations for therapeutic intervention, such as probing different states of ion channel cycling.
