Dr Melanie Köhler

Melanie Köhler is the head of the Junior Research Group Mechanoreceptors at the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich (LSB). Her research group aims to decipher the molecular basis underlying oral texture perception. They study and characterize the oral receptor molecules involved in mouthfeel (e.g. mechanoreceptors), their interplay with taste receptors/ chemesthesis and certain food constituents, known to enhance mouthfeel of food products. High-throughput atomic force microscopy (AFM) is used as a central technique in combination with new biophysical methodologies, other advanced microscopy techniques, mechano- and cell biology, food chemistry and biology, bioinformatics, and human sensory analysis to discover how texture makes flavour.

The combined use of these techniques will offer innovative routes to study, evaluate and standardize mouthfeel in flavour perception, and to design related novel food structures to solve problems in health, dietary choice, and nutrition.

Melanie Köhler

Recent AFM-related papers:

• Sutherland D. M., Strebl M., Koehlerd M., Welsh O. L., Yue X., Hue L., dos Santos Natividade R., Knowltona J. J., Taylora G. M., Morenoe R. A., Wörz P., Lonergan Z. R., Aravamudhana P., Guzman- Cardozo C., Koura S., Pandey U. B., Alsteens D., Wang Z., Prasade B. V. V., Stehle T. & Dermody T. S. (2023) NgR1 binding to reovirus reveals an unusual bivalent interaction and a new viral attachment protein PNAS 120 (24)

• Dos Santos Natividade R., Koehler M., Gomes P. S. F. C. & Alsteens D. (2023) Deciphering molecular mechanisms stabilizing the reovirus-binding complex PNAS 120 (21)

• Dumitru A. C. & Koehler M. (2023) Recent advances in the application of atomic force microscopy to structural biology Journal of Structural Biology 215 (2) 107963

• Shang P., Simpson J. D., Taylor G. M., Sutherland D. M., Welsh O. L., Aravamudhan P., Dos Santos Natividade R., Schwab K., Michel J. J., Poholek A. C., Wu Y., Rajasundaram D., Koehler M., Alsteens D. & Dermody T. S. (2023) Paired immunoglobulin-like receptor B is an entry receptor for mammalian orthoreovirus Nature Communications 14:2615

• Simpson J. D., Ray A., Marcon C., Dos Santos Natividade R., Dorrazehi G. D., Durlet K., Koehler M. & Alsteens D. (2023) Single-Molecule Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 Binding to C-Type Lectin Receptors Nano Letters 23 (4) 1496–1504

Biography: Melanie grew up in Rosenheim, Germany and received her Master of Science at the University of Applied Sciences in Linz, Austria in the field of Medical Engineering. She obtained her PhD with a thesis on "Single molecular binding studies of purine nucleotides to mitochondrial uncoupling proteins explored by recognition imaging and force spectroscopy" at the Johannes Kepler University, Institute of Biophysics, Linz, Austria. After that, at the end of 2016, she moved to the UCLouvain in Belgium, where she worked as postdoctoral researcher and explored the molecular mechanisms behind virus binding to cell surface receptors. Since June 2022 she heads the Junior Research Group Mechanoreceptors at the Leibniz-Institute of Food Systems Biology at the TU Munich, Germany.

Twitter: @melli_koehler

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/melanie-köhler-664752266

Webpage: https://www.leibniz-lsb.de/en/institute/staff/profile-dr-melanie-koehler/

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