October 28, 2025
We had the honor to host
Dr. Marina Chekulaeva from Max Delbruck Center, who gave a talk on
“RNA regulation in neurons and neurodegeneration”
Dr Marina Chekulaeva Short Bio
Marina Chekulaeva is a group leader at the Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology (BIMSB). She earned her Ph.D. from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, where she studied RNA regulation in fly oogenesis. She then conducted her postdoctoral research at the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Switzerland, dissecting the mechanisms of miRNA function. Her current research focuses on post-transcriptional gene regulation, with a particular interest in RNA localization and translation in neurons and its connection to neurodegenerative conditions such as ALS and CMT. Key findings from her lab established that mRNA localization largely determines protein localization in neurons (Nature Comm 2017) and that alternative 3’UTRs drive protein isoform localization (NAR 2019). More recently, her lab developed a transcriptome-wide method to map RNA localization elements (Nature Neuro 2023) and showed that mRNA stability and modifications regulate the localization of housekeeping mRNAs (Mol Cell 2023). In neurodegeneration research, her lab has revealed a mechanism of translational repression in Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease (NAR 2021) and established a valuable biobank of ALS iPSC-derived models to drive future research (NAR MolMed 2025).