Maria Rosario Fernandez-Fernandez, PhD
Senior Scientist, Fundación para la Investigación y la Innovación Biosanitaria del Principado de Asturias (FINBA)-ISPA, Mentor: Jose Jesus Fernandez Rodriguez, PhD
Alterations in polysomal architecture associated with Huntington’s disease (HD) progression
This work takes a new approach to exploring and correcting brain cell dysfunction in HD, aimed at the machinery that builds proteins from RNA recipes, known as ribosomes. These organelles often group into structures called polysomes, and Dr. Fernandez Fernandez has found that the machinery is disorganized and tends to stall in animal models of HD. Her goal is to study what goes wrong, then to test existing chemical compounds with “stalling relief” properties in human cells, to restore their ability to produce proteins efficiently.
