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Markus Ralser is an Italian biologist. His main research interest is microbial proteomics.

Life and career
Ralser was born near Brixen, Italy. He studied genetics and molecular biology in Salzburg, Austria. He completed his PhD in 2006 at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, Germany, studying neurodegenerative dieseases. This was followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands, where he started to explore mass spectrometry. He returned to the MPI for Molecular Genetics in 2007 to become junior group leader, but in 2011 relocated his group to the University of Cambridge, UK. He then relocated again, becoming group leader at the newly opened Francis Crick Institute in London in 2013 (senior group leader since 2019). In addition to this position, he became professor and head of the Institute of Biochemistry at the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. In 2022 his London group relocated to the University of Oxford, UK.

Research
Ralser's two research groups utilize LC–MS to analyze the proteomes and metabolomes of microorganisms. The main model organism is the baking yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), but other species, such as pathogenic fungus Candida albicans and the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe, are used too.

The Ralser lab not only uses LC–MS, but also develops novel LC–MS methods and protocols that improve detection accuracy, speed, and throughput. Specializing in data-independent acquisition, the group has developed scanning SWATH MS and Zeno SWATH MS in collaboration with MS manufacturer SCIEX. Both methods greatly improve upon SWATH MS, which was developed in Switzerland in 2012. The group additionally developed an acquisition method—DIA-NN—that uses neural networks.

Key research topics include:


 * Metabolic networks within cells and the exchang of metabolites between cells ,
 * The biochemistry of competing reactions within cells ,
 * The role, function, and regulation of metabolic genes ,
 * The evolution of central carbon metabolism ,
 * Microbial cytogenetics ,
 * Metabolism-related protective mechanisms against oxidative stress ,
 * Non-enzymatic reactions in cellular metabolism ,


 * Metabolic mechanisms of resistance to antifungal drugs.

During the Covid-19 pandemic the Ralser group developed a proteomics panel assay for the assessment of disease severity and for the prediction of outcome. The assay quantifies 50 peptides derived from 30 proteins found in the patient's blood plasma. The lab found that these proteins can serve as markers: their abundance strongly correlates with Covid-19 severity and outcome. The assay can be performed at a routine clinical laboratory, and has become commercially available.

As of January 2023 Ralser has published nearly 200 peer-reviewed articles that have been cited more than 13,000 times.

Awards

 * BioMed Central Research Award, Biology (2007)
 * Wellcome Beit Prize (2011)
 * South Tyrolean Science Award (2014)
 * Colworth Medal of the Biochemical Society, UK (2017)
 * Starling Medal of the Endocrinological Society, UK (2019)
 * EMBO Gold Medal (2020)