Curriculum Vitae Matthias Erlacher

Matthias Erlacher studied Chemistry at the University of Innsbruck before pursuing his PhD in the laboratory of Prof. Norbert Polacek at the Institute of Genomics and RNomics, Medical University of Innsbruck. During his doctoral studies, he focused on protein synthesis and investigated how ribosomal RNA is able to catalyze peptide bond formation. After graduating in 2008, he continued his research on protein synthesis while shifting his focus to mRNA decoding mechanisms in bacteria.

Following a brief post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Bern, he returned to the Medical University of Innsbruck to establish his own research group at the Institute of Genomics and RNomics (Director: Prof. Alexander Hüttenhofer). In 2015, he secured a tenure track position, which he successfully completed in 2019. The following year, he was appointed full professor for RNA Biology and Protein Synthesis and received his venia docendi in Molecular Biology.

His research centers on protein synthesis, mRNA modifications, tRNA function in translation, and translation initiation mechanisms. His scientific contributions include identifying novel translation initiation sites in E. coli, providing molecular characterization of decoding and translation termination processes, and conducting systematic analyses of how mRNA modifications impact translation elongation.