Maria Spletter is an Independent Group Leader at the Biomedical Center of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in the department of Physiological Chemistry. She graduated with distinction with a Bachelor of Science degree in Botany and Molecular Biology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 2003 and received her Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from Stanford University in 2010.
Dr. Spletter has a diverse research background revolving around the theme of gene expression and regulatory networks in development. As an undergraduate, she studied the developmental genetics of epidermal development in A. thaliana with Prof. Dr. Judith Croxdale and additionally worked with Prof. Dr. Jeffrey A. Johnson studying the contribution of radical oxygen species to neuronal degeneration in mouse and human models. During her doctoral studies she worked with Prof. Dr. Liqun Luo studying the development of wiring specificity in the olfactory system of D. melanogaster, exploring the function of the Longitudinals lacking (Lola) transcription factor and publishing a landmark study on the diversity of local interneurons in the antennal lobe. She then moved to Munich, Germany, as a postdoc to study muscle development in the laboratory of Dr. Frank Schnorrer at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry. She published a transcriptomics expression resource tracing development of the Drosophila flight muscles across 8 timepoints and identified a role for Bruno1 in flight-muscle specific alternative splicing downstream of the transcription factor Spalt major (Salm).
In 2017 she started her own laboratory in the Department of Physiological Chemistry at the LMU studying the role of alternative splicing and RNA regulation in muscle development. Her group uses genetics, genomics and biochemistry to identify functions for new RNA binding proteins in flies and vertebrate cells. Her group strives to understand the normal function and regulation of RNA processing in myogenesis and how dysregulation contributes to muscle disease.
