Zsofia Palfi has received her PhD from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1991 for her studies on regulation of light-dependent gene expression in cyanobacteria under stress conditions. As a recipient of a Max-Planck postdoctoral fellowship she has moved to Max-Planck-Institut für Molekulare Genetik in Berlin, Germany, where she was working on trans-mRNA splicing in trypanosomes as a member of the research group of Dr. Albrecht Bindereif. In 1996 she moved together with Prof. Bindereif to the Humboldt University in Berlin and in 1999 to the Justus-Liebig University in Giessen, Germany. Her major scientific interest during these years was to study mRNA processing in trypanosomes by structural and functional analysis of spliceosomal snRNPs. She was discovering Sm core variation in spliceosomal snRNPs in trypanosomes, and that a homologue of the spinal muscular atrophy protein (SMN) functions in trypanosomes as a major assembly factor for snRNP-specific Sm cores. Her work in mRNA processing is published in 20 original research articles. Since December 2009, she is working as a staff scientist in The Department of Neuronal Cell Biology at the CBR.

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