Personale docente

Born in Alger (Algeria) on September 26th, 1950
Present position: Associate professor of Genetics, Department of Lifesciences, University of Parma, Italy
Education and professional experiences:
1974 Graduated in Biological Sciences (five-year “laurea”) from the University of Parma, with marks 110/110 and laudem .
From 2010 he is teaching Genetics to students attending the first degree courses of Biology ( laurea triennale in Biologia) and Plant Genetics and Genetics of Microorganisms to students attending the second degree courses of Molecular Biology (laurea Magistrale in Biologia Molcolare)
During his scientific career he has been involved different research projects dealing, in the early years, with: the activity of mitochondria in yeast mutability and in plant differentiation, the identification of genes involved in gender differentiation in plants, and the development of unconventional mutagenic assay in plants. In those years he was involved in research projects financed by MIRAAF (Italian Ministry of Agriculture), MURST (Italian Ministry for University and Scientific Research), CNR (National Research Council)
At present his interest is devoted to two main research areas:
A) Molecular physiology of nitrogen assimilation and carbon/nitrogen status in plants with particular focus on the genetics and on the molecular regulation of glutamate dehydrogenase isozymes. B) Food safety: containment of mycotoxin accumulation in feed and food. Molecular identification of aflatoxin producing fungi and designing eco-friendly procedures to fight mycotoxic fungi.
As far as the first topic, he has been collaborating with national and foreign research groups to dissect the genetic system that control the activity and the localization of the different enzyme isoforms of the enzyme glutamate dehydrogenase in plants. The outcomes and the collaborations are witnessed by the publications reported in the following section.
As far as the second topic, he has been at first recruited in a joint project involving several research groups working in the Universities of Emilia Romagna Region in order to develop knowledge and facilities in the framework of SITEIA , SIQUAL, and Spinner. These projects, in turn, granted fellowships to young people to develop their research activity in the proponent laboratory. In particular, a molecular procedure, based on RT-PCR technique, was devised to discriminate between mycotoxin producer and non-producer strains of Aspergillus flavus. Additionally, various culture techniques were developed in order to analyze the effect of modification of environmental and nutritional condition on germination, growth and mycotoxin production by the fungus. Hightroughput procedures to study the interaction between different strains of Aspergillus flavus were also developed. Later on, owing to the collaboration with a local corn seed company an extensive selection program was performed in order to map the A.flavus population in the pianura padana geographic area. The aim of this project was to isolate, in the corn fields, the endemic strains of A. flavus in order to develop a set of non-toxin producers ( afla-) to be tested for their ability to compete with the mycotoxigenic strains (afla+) for niche occupation. The best (afla-) performing strains are now being tested as possible bio-competitors to contrast aflatoxin contamination of corn derived food and feed commodities. More recently the proponent was interested to develop a different approach, based on the use of new generation fungicides, to cope with the problem of mycotoxin contamination (see the recent publication appeared in Int.Jour. Food Microbiol., 2015). Putting together the expertise of different research teams - involved in synthetic chemistry, environmental mutagenesis, and the expertise of the proponent research group - a comprehensive project, entitled "A biotechnological approach to the development of new antifungal pesticides to protect the environment and human health", was designed: it has been funded by the CARIPLO foundation . Ref. Practice 2014-0555.

Bibliometric parameters:

orcid.org/0000-0002-7210-0751

RG score 29.38
h index 15 (Scopus and WOS)
total citation 556 (WOS)
Average citation per Year 15.44 (WOS)