Professor Dr. Joanna Rorbach

Joanna Rorbach is a Professor at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. Her research focuses on mitochondrial gene expression and its implications for human health and disease. She leads a research group investigating the molecular mechanisms underlying mitochondrial ribosome assembly, RNA processing, and protein synthesis, with particular emphasis on their roles in inherited mitochondrial disorders.

Dr. Rorbach earned her Ph.D. from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Mitochondrial Research at Newcastle University. She subsequently conducted postdoctoral research at the Medical Research Council, University of Cambridge, where she focused on mitochondrial genetics and gene regulation. In 2017, she established her independent research group at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing–Karolinska Institutet Laboratory in Stockholm.

Her work has been recognized with several prestigious awards, including the Wallenberg Academy Fellowship, Wallenberg Scholars award, the Novo Nordisk Ascending Investigator Grant, and the Göran Gustafsson Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Selected publications:  

1. Shao Q, Khawaja A, Nguyen MD, Singh V, Zhang J, Adori M, Innis A, Dopico X, Rorbach J*. Structural basis of T cell toxicity induced by tigecycline binding to the mitochondrial ribosome. Nat Commun (2025) May 16.
2. Cipullo M, Gesé G, Gopalakrishna S, Krueger A, Páleníková P, Shiriaev D, Liu Y, Misic J, Nguyen M, Minczuk M, Attanasov I, Hällberg M, Rorbach J*. GTPBP8 is essential for mitoribosome formation in mammalian mitochondria. Nat Commun (2024) Jul 5. 
3. Remes C, Khawaja A, Pearce SF, Dinan AM, Gopalakrishna S, Cipullo M, Kyriakidis V, Zhang J, Dopico XC, Yukhnovets O, Atanassov I, Firth AE, Cooperman B, Rorbach J*. Translation initiation of leaderless and polycistronic transcripts in mammalian mitochondria. Nucleic Acids Res (2023) Jan 11. 
4. Krüger A, Remes C, Shiriaev DI, Liu Y, Spåhr H, Wibom R, Atanassov I, Nguyen MD, Cooperman BS, Rorbach J*. Human mitochondria require mtRF1 for translation termination at non-canonical stop codons. Nat Commun (2023) Jan 3;14(1):30. 
5. Itoh Y, Khawaja A, Laptev I, Cipullo M, Atanassov I, Sergiev P, Rorbach J*, Amunts A*.   Mechanism of mitoribosomal small subunit biogenesis and preinitiation

Nature (2022), Jun;606(7914):603-608.

1. Cipullo M, Gese GV, Khawaja A, Hallberg M*, Rorbach J*. 

Structural basis for late maturation steps of the human mitoribosomal large subunit.

 Nature Commun (2021) 12(1), 1-11.

1. Khawaja A, Itoh Y, Remes C, Spahr H, Hofling H, Yukhnovets O, Amunts A*, Rorbach J*. Distinct pre-initiation steps in human mitochondria. 

Nature Commun (2020) Jun 11:293-98.