Biography:

Alexandra Maldonado López completed her Biomedical Sciences Bachelor’s in Science at the University of Puerto Rico at Ponce. During her undergrad, she was part of Ponce Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement (PRISE), which is a training program funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, where she found out her passion to continue in scientific research and wanted to pursue a PhD in an area intersecting reversible modifications and carcinogenesis.

Straight from undergrad, she started her PhD in the Genetics and Epigenetics program at the Perelman School of Medicine – University of Pennsylvania. At the end of her first year, Alexandra joined the Capell lab in the Dermatology Department. However, instead of focusing on epigenetics like the rest of her labmates, she decided to pursue the new area of RNA reversible modifications called epitranscriptomics. She is researching how the METTL3-m⁶A epitranscriptome affects skin homeostasis and UV-induced carcinogenesis using, for example, different sequencing techniques such as m⁶A-seq in Primary Normal Human Epidermal Keratinocytes and in both constitutive and inducible mouse models.

T32-Funded research supported the following:

Publications:

Maldonado López, A., & Capell, B. C. (2021). The METTL3-m⁶A Epitranscriptome: Dynamic Regulator of Epithelial Development, Differentiation, and Cancer. Genes, 12(7), 1019. https://doi.org/10.3390/genes12071019

Grants:

Diversity Supplement Award, NIAMS, 2022