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.

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.

Martina is contributing to BT1001, BT2001, NU2057, NU2078, NU2095, NU2097, BC4012, and is coordinator of BC3006.