While significant progress has been made in understanding the sequence requirements of the cis-acting elements involved, the cellular factors that mediate their effects are still largely unknown. My current research focuses on characterising the cellular environments that affect specific mRNA translation mechanisms. This investigation seeks to uncover the cell type-specific factors that influence recoding mechanisms, resulting in cell type specific regulation of translation.
Characterisation of the cellular environments with differential translational properties will inform ways to leverage recoding mechanisms to design mRNAs whose expression is regulated specifically depending on the cell type. The latter has implications for the development of highly specific mRNA therapeutics with controllable expression.
Biography
Martina Yordanova holds a BS degree in Molecular Biology from Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" in Bulgaria. Following her undergraduate studies, she joined the lab of Professor John F. Atkins and completed her Ph.D. at University College Cork. Her research was further supported by an IRC postdoctoral fellowship. In 2022 she was appointed as a lecturer in the School of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at UCC.Research Interests
I study the mechanisms of mRNA translation, with a particular focus on events deviating from the standard rules of decoding. During my doctoral studies in the laboratory of Professor John F. Atkins, whose pioneering work demarcated the Recoding field, I developed an appreciation for the plethora of non-canonical mechanisms accommodated by the mRNA translation process. We and others have extensively examined the properties of the mRNA or the nascent peptide that promote alternative ribosome behaviours, such as programmed ribosomal frameshifting, stop codon readthrough etc.While significant progress has been made in understanding the sequence requirements of the cis-acting elements involved, the cellular factors that mediate their effects are still largely unknown. My current research focuses on characterising the cellular environments that affect specific mRNA translation mechanisms. This investigation seeks to uncover the cell type-specific factors that influence recoding mechanisms, resulting in cell type specific regulation of translation.
Characterisation of the cellular environments with differential translational properties will inform ways to leverage recoding mechanisms to design mRNAs whose expression is regulated specifically depending on the cell type. The latter has implications for the development of highly specific mRNA therapeutics with controllable expression.
Publications
Peer Reviewed Journals
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| (2022) | 'Ghrelin rapidly elevates protein synthesis in vitro by employing the rpS6K-eEF2K-eEF2 signalling axis' Zhdanov AV;Golubeva AV;Yordanova MM;Andreev DE;Ventura-Silva AP;Schellekens H;Baranov PV;Cryan JF;Papkovsky DB; (2022) 'Ghrelin rapidly elevates protein synthesis in vitro by employing the rpS6K-eEF2K-eEF2 signalling axis'. Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences, 79 (8) [DOI] [Details] | |
| (2022) | 'Development of a ribosome profiling protocol to study translation in Kluyveromyces marxianus' Fenton DA;Kiniry SJ;Yordanova MM;Baranov PV;Morrissey JP; (2022) 'Development of a ribosome profiling protocol to study translation in Kluyveromyces marxianus'. FEMS yeast research, 22 (1) [DOI] [Details] | |
| (2022) | 'Stop codon readthrough contexts influence reporter expression differentially depending on the presence of an IRES' Yordanova MM;Loughran G;Atkins JF;Baranov PV; (2022) 'Stop codon readthrough contexts influence reporter expression differentially depending on the presence of an IRES'. Wellcome Open Research, 5 [DOI] [Details] | |
| (2020) | 'Translation initiation downstream from annotated start codons in human mRNAs coevolves with the Kozak context' Benitez-Cantos, Maria S.; Yordanova, Martina M.; O'Connor, Patrick B. F.; Zhdanov, Alexander V.; Kovalchuk, Sergey I.; Papkovsky, Dmitri B.; Andreev, Dmitry E.; Baranov, Pavel V. (2020) 'Translation initiation downstream from annotated start codons in human mRNAs coevolves with the Kozak context'. Genome Research, 30 (7):974-984 [DOI] [Full Text] [Details] | |
| (2018) | 'AMD1 mRNA employs ribosome stalling as a mechanism for molecular memory formation' Yordanova, Martina M.; Loughran, Gary; Zhdanov, Alexander V.; Mariotti, Marco; Kiniry, Stephen J.; O’Connor, Patrick B. F.; Andreev, Dmitry E.; Tzani, Ioanna; Saffert, Paul; Michel, Audrey M.; Gladyshev, Vadim N.; Papkovsky, Dmitry B.; Atkins, John F.; Baranov, Pavel V. (2018) 'AMD1 mRNA employs ribosome stalling as a mechanism for molecular memory formation'. Nature, 553 :356-360 [DOI] [Full Text] [Details] | |
| (2015) | 'A Nascent Peptide Signal Responsive to Endogenous Levels of Polyamines Acts to Stimulate Regulatory Frameshifting on Antizyme mRNA' Yordanova, MM;Wu, C;Andreev, DE;Sachs, MS;Atkins, JF (2015) 'A Nascent Peptide Signal Responsive to Endogenous Levels of Polyamines Acts to Stimulate Regulatory Frameshifting on Antizyme mRNA'. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 290 :17863-17878 [DOI] [Details] | |
| (2015) | 'Augmented genetic decoding: global, local and temporal alterations of decoding processes and codon meaning' Baranov PV;Atkins JF;Yordanova MM; (2015) 'Augmented genetic decoding: global, local and temporal alterations of decoding processes and codon meaning'. Nature Reviews Genetics, 16 (9) [DOI] [Details] |
Editorship
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| (2022) | A frameshift in time. Yordanova MM;Baranov PV; (2022) A frameshift in time. Editorship [DOI] [Details] |