Natalia Rodriguez-Muela

Dr. Natalia Rodriguez-Muela serves as a Group Leader at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) in Dresden, Germany, where her research addresses the fundamental question of why specific neuronal populations degenerate in neurodegenerative diseases while others with similar genetic and functional properties remain resilient.

Her laboratory investigates selective motor neuron vulnerability in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), employing human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs), transgenic animal models, live imaging, genome editing, and single-cell genomics. A pivotal discovery from her work demonstrates that motor neurons exhibit intrinsic heterogeneity in survival motor neuron (SMN) protein levels within identical genetic backgrounds, with low-SMN neurons showing heightened susceptibility to degeneration—a finding explaining the persistence of "surviving" motor neuron populations in disease progression.

• Molecular basis of neuron-specific vulnerability
• SMN protein regulation and heterogeneity
• Cell-autonomous vs. non-cell-autonomous degeneration mechanisms
• Proteostasis failure in neurodegeneration
• Therapeutic targeting of resistant neuronal subtypes
• Comparative analysis of ALS/SMA motor neuron survival pathways

No scientific awards, student advisees, or research grants were documented in the source material. Dr. Rodriguez-Muela leads an independent research team at DZNE focused on translating molecular insights into targeted interventions for motor neuron diseases.