Luca Piccinini

I did my BSc in Biotechnology at the University of Pisa (2012-2016), and my MSc in Molecular Biotechnology, jointly awarded by Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna and University of Pisa (2016-2018). In 2018 I won the scholarship for the PhD programme in Agrobiosciences offered by Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna.

• Iacopino et al., A Synthetic Oxygen Sensor for Plants Based on Animal Hypoxia Signaling. Plant Physiol. Mar;179(3):986-1000 (2019).
• Weits et al., Acquisition of hypoxia inducibility by oxygen sensing N-terminal cysteine oxidase in spermatophytes. bioRxiv, Preprint (2020).

My research approach rely on the use of synthetic biology to design and assemble orthogonal molecular switches. The aim of my research is to expand the toolbox of genetically encoded bio-sensors, to investigate molecules possibly involved in the regulation of the hypoxic response in plants. In particular I am interested in the analysis of metabolites from fermentative metabolism, to better characterize the metabolism at the level of the shoot apical meristem (SAM). I am also working to engineer orthogonal responses to other stimuli, such as light, in Arabidosis thaliana, by exploiting mechanisms derived from outside the plant kingdom.