Research Interests:
Proteins are essential cellular components whose precise production and degradation rates (their turnover), poses a series of complex challenges to biological systems.
Which are the mechanisms that regulate protein turnover?
Are there overarching principles at the basis of this complex equilibrium?
Currently, our lab is developing technologies that will help answering these questions.
Our overall goal is to elucidate the molecular principles underlying protein turnover in the brain with a specific focus on neuron development and aging. We are working on a range of labelling techniques including microscopy and mass spectrometry technologies to assay the stability and the replacement of proteins in vitro and in vivo in several model systems.
We have previously optimized pulse labelling in vivo and coupled it to mathematical modeling to study the turnover of brain proteins (Fornasiero et al. 2018). We are interested in the overall regulation mechanisms at the basis of protein turnover regulation, and we have found an interesting link between wobble nucleotide usage and protein stability (Mandad et al., 2018).
More in general we are interested in the molecular aspects regulating synaptic vesicle recycling, stability, trafficking and recycling during neuronal activity (Truckenbrodt et al., 2018).
If you are interested in our research don’t hesitate to contact us.