Rate My Professor Maria Falkenberg

Maria Falkenberg is Professor of Medical Biochemistry in the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Cell Biology at the Institute of Biomedicine, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg. She earned her PhD in Medical Biochemistry from the University of Gothenburg in 2000, with thesis research on the molecular aspects of DNA replication in Herpes Simplex virus type 1, including three years as a visiting student in Prof. I.R. Lehman’s laboratory at Stanford University School of Medicine. From 2001 to 2003, she conducted postdoctoral research with Prof. Nils-Göran Larsson at the Karolinska Institute, focusing on mechanisms of mitochondrial DNA replication. In 2003, she was appointed assistant professor at the Karolinska Institute, where she established her research group. Since 2011, she has held her professorship at the University of Gothenburg. Falkenberg’s laboratory investigates the basic mechanisms of human mitochondrial DNA replication and its regulation in health and disease, using in vitro biochemistry and reconstituted systems with artificial templates and recombinant proteins. She pioneered the first cell-free system for studying human mitochondrial DNA replication. Her work addresses functional consequences of mutations in nuclear-encoded proteins required for mitochondrial DNA maintenance, which cause neurodegeneration, muscle diseases, and are linked to age-related conditions such as diabetes type II and Parkinson’s disease.