Alise Muok, PhD

Hello! I am postdoctoral researcher and Veni fellow working at Leiden University. I’m interested in studying the structure and function of bacterial proteins that are responsible for chemical sensing and locomotion. In the lab of Dr. Ariane Briegel, I utilize structural and biochemical methods to investigate these systems. If you want to learn more about the Briegel lab and our research, you can click here to meet all the current members and learn about their their projects.

Before working in the Briegel lab, I was a graduate student in the lab of Dr. Brian Crane at Cornell University as a NSF GRFP fellow. Here I focused on structural and biochemical methods for analysing proteins, with a particular interest in x-ray crystallography. After receiving my PhD from Cornell University in 2018, I moved to the Briegel lab to expand my scientific technique set by using Cryo-EM methods that allow me to see protein structures inside living cells.

My current projects focus on the bacterial chemotaxis systems of pathogens and inter-microbial hitchhiking motilities. I do this through a combination of techniques that allow me to probe protein systems at the molecular level and up to the cellular level. I strive to practically apply my data for clinical and industrial initiatives, creating a better world for humans and microbes!

Members of the Briegel lab! Back row: Jamie Depelteau, Ariane Briegel, Alise Muok, and Wen Yang. Front row: Adam Sidi Mabrouk and Eveline Ultee. We now have several new members so check out the lab website.