Maria Carmo-Fonseca

Maria Carmo-Fonseca is Full Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Lisbon. Since 2002 she serves as Executive Director of the Institute of Molecular Medicine in Lisbon. Carmo-Fonseca is member of several scientific organizations such as the European Molecular Biology Organization, the Portuguese Academy of Sciences and the Portuguese Academy of Medicine. She is also monitoring editor for the Journal of Cell Science, Director of the Harvard Medical School-Portugal Program and Visiting Professor at Harvard Medical School. Carmo-Fonseca’s research vision is to unravel mechanisms of gene regulation controlled by RNA molecules. Gene regulation is central to human biology. RNA molecules, with their ability to both encode information and exert catalytic activities, play a key role in the regulation of gene expression. Early molecular biologists thought and taught for many years that RNA molecules served mainly as carriers of genetic information from DNA, and adaptors for protein synthesis. Today we are aware of a wealth of new functions carried out by RNA in cells and organisms. RNA is also emerging as a promising biotechnological tool with numerous potential industrial applications. In the past, our group discovered a novel RNA surveillance process that acts co-transcriptionally in the cell nucleus and we have since been interested in further dissecting its molecular mechanisms. We have studied how splicing affects chromatin structure and we have developed microscopy tools to measure the dynamics of transcription and splicing in real time. The great challenge ahead will be to understand the functional implications of RNA-mediated transcriptional control in medical relevant cellular processes such as stemness, oncogenesis and aging. It is most likely that the knowledge resulting from these studies can be translated in the future into novel disease biomarkers and therapies. Ongoing projects in our laboratory make use of a multidisciplinary approach that combines live-cell microscopy, computational modelling, molecular biology, biochemistry and bioinformatics.