Daniel J. Müller

Molecular interactions drive all processes in life. Because of this enormous importance it is one pertinent demand in life sciences, systems biology and synthetic biology to characterize how these interactions drive biological processes and thus to decipher fundamentals of the biological language. The research group of Daniel Müller develops bionanotechnological methods that allow quantifying inter- and intramolecular interactions of biological processes. Currently these methods allow to image cells at nanometer resolution, to quantify and localize cellular interactions at molecular resolution and to observe how individual receptors of living cells communicate. Furthermore, recent developments of multiparametric nanoscopic tools allow to image cells, cellular membranes or membrane proteins and to simultaneously quantify and map multiple of their physical, chemical and biological properties. The continuous development of single-molecule force spectroscopy assays opens the possibility to quantify and structurally localize interactions that fold, stabilize and control the functional state of membrane proteins at physiological relevant conditions in lipid or cellular membranes.

Further we develop and apply nanotechnological tools to quantify the mechanical properties of animal cells in fundamental processes including adhesion, sorting, growth and mitosis. Whereas some of these tools allow to measure the adhesion of cells from the cellular to the molecular scale, others enable to characterize processes and mechanisms determining cell shape. Recently, these methods could be for example applied to discover new genes/proteins in regulating shape changes of mitotic cells or to mechanically control mitosis. Other examples include quantifying how membrane receptors regulate cell adhesion moelcules and which genes/proteins are key to this regulation. Very recently we developed, together with the group of Botond Roska, very efficient tools to genetically reprogram single neuronal cells in vitro and in vivo.

Daniel Müller has been a full Professor of Biophysics at the ETH Zurich since 1. April 2010.

Prof. Müller was born on March 22, 1965 in Bad Wimpfen, Germany and studied physics at the University of Technology of Berlin and the Hahn-Meitner-Institute in Berlin, Germany. After finishing his studies he started his Ph.D. in Biophysics at the Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany, with Georg Büldt and at the Biozentrum Basel, Switzerland with Andreas Engel. In 1997 he finished his Ph.D. and received the Prize for the best Ph.D. thesis in Life Sciences of the University of Basel. In 2000 Daniel Müller received his habilitation ‘venia legendi’ in Biophysics from the University of Basel. In 2000 Daniel Müller continued his career as a group leader at the newly founded Max-Planck-Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany. In 2002 Daniel Müller accepted a full professorship of Cellular Machines at the Biotechnology Center of the University of Technology, Dresden. He acted as a director of the Center from 2003-2005. In 2006 Müller co-funded one of the largest Bionanotechnology Spin-Offs in Germany. The company developing and manufacturing the world’s first robot that fully automatically conducts single-molecule experiments was sold in 2008. In 2008 Daniel Müller in a team with Carsten Werner and Ulrich Nienhaus launched a new BMBF research center for Molecular Bioengineering (B CUBE, www.bcube-dresden.de) at the TU Dresden. In December 2010 Müller accepted the Chair of Bionanotechnology at the ETH Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering (D BSSE) in Basel. Together with Wolfgang Meier (Uni Basel) Daniel Müller in 2014 launched and co-directs the Swiss National Competence Center of Research (NCCR) Molecular Systems Engineering at Basel (www.nccr-mse.ch). In 2018 Daniel Müller in a team together with Urs Frey (UKKB) launched the Botnar Research Center for Child Health (BRCCH, www.brcch.org) supported by the Fondation Botnar, the University of Basel and the ETH Zürich. From 2019 until 2021 Müller was Deputy Head and from 2021 until 2024 he was Head of the D BSSE. In 2023 Müller in a team of the ETH Zürich established a Partnership with Roche to educate the next-generation of researchers in translational bioengineering and to push the boundaries of today’s medicine (https://next-gen-bioengineers.ethz.ch).