Sara Beltrami

I got both my bachelor’s (Biological Science) and master’s degree (Cellular and Molecular Biology) at Alma Mater Studiorum of Bologna (2014-2019). In 2019 I joined the Plantlab as student of the PhD program in Agrobiosciences of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna.

I am studying the effects of iodine in plants, using Arabidopsis thaliana as a model system. This element is recognized as a micronutrient for humans and its deficit is associated thyroid disfunction leading to several correlated disease. The objective of research is the study of the effects of iodine at the molecular (gene expression) and protein level (protein modification) to establish whether iodine can be considered a micronutrient also for plants, important for their growth and development. Discovery, identification, and further characterization of iodinated proteins is important to bring new insight about iodine metabolism in plats. Understanding how iodine is used by plants is a fundamental step for the biofortification of crops which aim is to increase the iodine content in the edible part of the plant to sustain lack of this element in the human diet.