Rachele Marino received her Master’s degree in Genetics and Molecular Biology from “La Sapienza” University of Rome and completed her internship at the Department of Molecular Medicine, where she studied the role of “paused promoters” in acute myeloid leukemia (AML), demonstrating that aberrant DNA hypermethylation is associated with a significant reduction of H3K4 chromatin marker in an AML cellular model.
She then completed a PhD in Human Biology and Medical Genetics from “La Sapienza,” where she studied the role and function of Argonauta2 during senescence and identified the nuclear key interactors of this protein.
Dr. Marino continued her career in neuroscience at the Ebri-Rita Levi Montalcini Foundation in Rome, where she investigated the role of SUMOylation in neurodegenerative diseases that include Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s. She explored the regulatory mechanism of TAU aggregation and its post-transcriptional control, specifically SUMOylation, in primary neurons and neuroblastoma cell lines.
Since August 2023, Rachele Marino, as a researcher at the Need Institute, has received a scholarship that allows her to continue her research focusing on the mechanism of the re-localization and aggregation of the TDP-43 protein at the cytoplasmic level, which is a hallmark of ALS pathology.
Particularly, she will evaluate how TDP43 SUMOylation impacts the citotoxicity in primary neurons and fibroblasts derived from ALS patients.