Rate My Professor Jernej Murn

Jernej Murn is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of California, Riverside, where he has been a faculty member since July 2017, initially as an Assistant Professor, and received tenure in 2025. He earned his BSc in Chemistry/Pharmacology from the University of Ljubljana in 2001 and his PhD in 2006 for work on transcriptional regulation and genetic mechanisms of programmed cell death, conducted with Xavier Gidrol at the CEA Laboratory for Functional Genomics in Évry, France, and Irena Mlinarič-Raščan at the University of Ljubljana. Following a short postdoctoral position in cancer biology at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, he pursued further training with Yang Shi at Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, focusing on RNA-binding proteins and epigenetics of nerve cells in development. Murn serves as an investigator at the Center for RNA Biology and Medicine, a faculty member of the Stem Cell Center and the Institute for Integrative Genome Biology, and is the founder of StopTime Inc., a startup developing tools to induce cell dormancy and hypometabolism for therapeutic and preservation applications.

The Murn Lab investigates the central role of RNA in biology, with a focus on RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) that regulate gene expression, RNA processing, cellular quiescence, neuronal function, aging, and diseases including cancer and neurological disorders. Employing genome-wide and computational approaches combined with biochemistry, genetics, and cell biology, the lab aims for a systems-level understanding of RNA networks and develops novel technologies to decipher in vivo protein-RNA and RNA-RNA interactions. Key publications include 'Composition and RNA binding specificity of metazoan RNase MRP' (Nucleic Acids Research, 2025), 'Cellular quiescence induced by rapid depletion of RNase MRP' (Nature Communications, 2025), 'A pseudouridine-binding protein' (Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2025), 'A paradigm for regulation at the effector interface with RNA-binding proteins' (Nature Communications, 2024), and 'Post-translational modulation of RNA-binding proteins' (Journal of Biological Chemistry, 2023). Murn co-led a study on genome organization influencing cell fate and has contributed to research on histone chaperones coupled to DNA replication and transcriptional regulation.