Dr. Gorospe received her Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Albany (New York) in 1993. She completed her post-doctoral training at the Section on Cell Stress and Aging, National Institute on Aging, and assumed the position of Investigator in the Spring of 1998 and Senior Investigator in the Fall of 2003.  Her research program focuses on post-transcriptional mechanisms that modulate gene expression in mammalian cells.

Research Interests: Human aging is characterized by a general decline in the ability of individuals to adequately respond to different stimuli from either environmental or endogenous sources.  The long-term goal of our research program is to elucidate the mechanisms that regulate gene expression after exposure to damaging and proliferative signals, two major cellular responses that are critically impaired with aging.  We are particularly interested in two prominent post-transcriptional processes, mRNA turnover and translation.  Our studies include global and gene-specific analyses of mRNA stability and translation, the identification of target RNA sequences for association of RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) that modulate mRNA stability and translation, the elucidation of RBP function in response to stress agents and proliferative signals, and the investigation of microRNAs (miRNAs) that modulate the stress response, cell proliferation, replicative senescence, and aging.  Our central working hypothesis is that post-transcriptional gene regulation underlies the aberrant responses to damaging and proliferative stimuli that characterize cellular senescence and advancing age.