Krebber, Heike, Prof. Dr.

Professor for Molecular Genetics

1996 Dr. rer. nat., Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ, Heidelberg (Germany)
1996 Visiting Scientist, Weizman Institute of Science, Rehovot (Israel)
1996-1999 Scientist, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston (USA)
1999-2010 Junior group leader, Institute für Molekularbiologie und Tumorforschung, Philipps-Universität Marburg (Germany)
2005 Habilitation in Molecular Biology
2006 Heisenberg Fellow
since 2010 Professor for Molecular Genetics, Georg-August Universität Göttingen (Germany)

Major Research Interests
mRNA quality control:
Messenger RNAs are transcribed in the nucleus and translated in the cytoplasm. Thus, it has to be assured that intron containing pre messenger RNAs are retained in the nucleus until processing is completed. RNA quality control allows only fully processed and spliced mRNAs to be transported and translated. Defects lead to diseases such as cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. Our projects functionally study mRNA quality control.
ncRNA functions:
non coding (nc)RNAs make up more than half of all RNAs in cells. However, the knowledge about their cellular functions lack far behind the knowledge of coding mRNAs. In this project we are investigating the function of individual lncRNAs, e.g. those involved in cellular iron metabolism, important to understand iron-related diseases, or the telomerase, important for the unlimited growth of most cancer cells.
We use the eukaryotic model organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae that has proven to be pioneer organism for studying fundamental basic scientific questions.

Homepage Department/Research Group
http://www.img.bio.uni-goettingen.de/molgen.htm

ORCID: 0000-0001-6531-0710