Damir Musaev (he/his)

Damir Musaev is a senior PhD student in the Genetics Department at Yale School of Medicine. He is studying posttranscriptional gene regulation in zebrafish under supervision of Dr. Antonio Giraldez. He is investigating the role of open reading frame (ORF), in particular codon optimality, peptide bonds and translation efficiency in mRNA stability. Prior to starting his PhD Damir has worked in the neurogenetics lab of Dr. Joseph Gleeson at The Rockefeller University/UCSD (2014-2017) to better understand the genetic causes of inborn brain disorders in children around the world. During his three-year journey in the Gleeson lab, Damir linked mutations in more than 25 novel genes to inborn brain disorders. In the future, Damir is looking forward to developing therapeutics for controlling post-transcriptional gene regulation in patients with neurodevelopmental disorders. In his spare time Damir enjoys playing guitar, hiking, cooking and traveling with his wife.