Fátima Gebauer - Biography#

Fátima Gebauer obtained her PhD in Sciences from the Autónoma University of Madrid, and performed postdocs in the labs of Joel Richter (UMass, USA) and Matthias Hentze (EMBL, Germany). In 2000, she obtained a staff scientist position at EMBL, and in 2002 an independent position at the CRG (Barcelona, Spain), where she is Group Leader, Coordinator of the Graduate Program and member of the Board of Directors of the UPF Doctorate School. Fátima is EMBO member, editor of RNA and elected Chair of the EMBL Alumni Association. Her team is interested in mechanisms of translational control by RNA binding proteins (RBPs), how translation is interconnected with other cellular processes and how RBP de-regulation leads to disease. She contributed to the field of cytoplasmic polyadenylation demonstrating its relevance for mammalian meiotic progression, and discovering non-canonical polyadenylation machineries. She also established in vitro systems that allow the molecular analysis of translation events, and has uncovered novel modes of RNA recognition by RBPs. She is currently investigating functions of RBPs in human cancer using melanoma as a model system. Combining biochemistry with unbiased genome-wide approaches, she has identified novel oncogenes. Her interest is to understand the underlying translational regulatory mechanisms that contribute to cancer progression in order to generate knowledge useful for Society.