Madita Wolter

Position: EMBO Postdoctoral Fellow

Home town: Lippstadt, Deutschland

Freetime favorites: playing the piano, reading, traveling

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As a research scientist I have always been fascinated by cellular signaling networks and how they are organized, controlled, and maintained. I thus studied biology (B.Sc.) and ‘biochemistry and molecular biology’ (M.Sc.) at the University of Bayreuth, where I specialized in protein biochemistry and cell biology. During my PhD in the group of Dr. Christian Ottmann and Prof. Luc Brunsveld at the Technical University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands, I expanded my knowledge into chemical biology. The focus of my PhD thesis was the small-molecule-driven stabilization of protein-protein interactions at the example of the adaptor protein 14-3-3 and its various interaction partners. I identified new compounds targeting the 14-3-3/p65 interaction by fragment-based drug discovery, validated hits by X-ray crystallography and biophysical assays. In June 2021 I joined the Lorenz lab, where I am working on the basis of specificity in HECT ligase-substrate interactions.