Rate My Professor Maria Falkenberg

Maria Falkenberg is Professor of Medical Biochemistry in the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Cell Biology at the Institute of Biomedicine, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg. She earned her PhD in Medical Biochemistry from the University of Gothenburg in 2000, with thesis research on the molecular aspects of DNA replication in Herpes Simplex virus type 1, including three years as a visiting student in Prof. I.R. Lehman’s laboratory at Stanford University School of Medicine. From 2001 to 2003, she conducted postdoctoral research with Prof. Nils-Göran Larsson at the Karolinska Institute, focusing on mechanisms of mitochondrial DNA replication. In 2003, she was appointed assistant professor at the Karolinska Institute, where she established her research group. Since 2011, she has held her professorship at the University of Gothenburg. Falkenberg’s laboratory investigates the basic mechanisms of human mitochondrial DNA replication and its regulation in health and disease, using in vitro biochemistry and reconstituted systems with artificial templates and recombinant proteins. She pioneered the first cell-free system for studying human mitochondrial DNA replication. Her work addresses functional consequences of mutations in nuclear-encoded proteins required for mitochondrial DNA maintenance, which cause neurodegeneration, muscle diseases, and are linked to age-related conditions such as diabetes type II and Parkinson’s disease.

Falkenberg has received numerous honors, including election to the European Molecular Biology Organization in 2024, the Torsten Söderberg Academy Professorship in Medicine in 2026, Wallenberg Scholar appointment by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation in 2019, election to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 2015, and the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences in Gothenburg in 2017. Other awards include the Edlundska Prize (2012), Sven och Ebba-Christina Hagbergs Prize in Chemistry (2009), and Fernström Prize (2009). Key publications include “Replication and Transcription of Human Mitochondrial DNA” (Annual Review of Biochemistry, 2024), “Mitochondrial DNA replication in mammalian cells: overview of the pathway” (Essays in Biochemistry, 2018), and “The mitochondrial single-stranded DNA binding protein is required for initiation of DNA synthesis in mammalian cells” (2021). Her research, funded by the European Research Council, Swedish Research Council, and Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, contributes to developing treatments for mitochondrial diseases through collaborations with biotech companies.