Biography

I have been trained in Plant biotechnologies (Master Degree) and Molecular biotechnologies (PhD) at the University of Pisa. I joined Sant’Anna as a post-doctoral fellow from 2010 to 2017. My current position is as Assistant professor in Plant Physiology at the University of Pisa.

Research

I have been involved in studying how plants respond to low oxygen since my PhD, using the lab model Arabidopsis thaliana to investigate the function and behaviour of conserved hypoxia-inducible genes. While taking part to the endeavour of reconstructing the key regulatory modules that enables plants to sense oxygen, I have focused on strategies for the exploitation of such mechanisms in plants and heterologous eukaryotic systems. My goal is to take advantage of synthetic biology for delving into the conservation and functionality of the oxygen sensing components, developing novel oxygen biosensors for living cells, and improving plant potential to withstand environmental stresses.

Selected publications

• Licausi F & Giuntoli B (2020) New Phytol, https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.16441.
• Bui LT et al. (2020) Plant J, https://doi.org/10.1111/tpj.14975.
• Masson N et al. (2019) Science 365 (6448) 65-69. doi: 10.1126/science.aaw0112.
• Puerta ML et al. (2019) J Mol Biol 431 (15): 2810-2820. doi.org/10.1016/j.jmb.2019.05.023.
• Shukla V et al. (2019) Mol Plant 12 (4): 538-551. doi: 10.1016/j.molp.2019.01.007.
• Iacopino S et al. (2019) Plant Physiol 179 (3): 986-1000.doi: 10.1104/pp.18.01003.