Personal web page of Piero Morandini

Piero Morandini is at present assistant professor (Ricercatore) in Plant Physiology at the Department of Biology, University of Milan.

Short CV

Piero Morandini was born in December 1962. After receiving a degree in Chemistry at the University of Turin in 1986, he moved to the field of biology. He worked for three years in Munich at the Max Planck institute for Biochemistry and the Zoological institute of the Ludwig-Maximilian University, specializing in the field of molecular biology and development of the soil amoeba Dictyostelium. He moved on to Cambridge (UK), working on the same subject at the Medical Research Council in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology for three years. Since 1994 he is at the Department of Biology (University of Milan) in the section for Plant Physiology and Biochemistry, working on fundamental problems of plant biology and biotechnology. Lately in particular his major interest is about the control of metabolic flux and intermediate concentration.

As a side, but labor intensive activity, he collaborates with several newspapers, including Avvenire, Espansione and Tempi, for improving the public understanding of agricultural biotechnology.

Research interest

Since moving to Milan he has worked on the regulation of P-type ATPases and more recently on the control of metabolism.

A full list of publication is available here or through the Medline database. Among these, let me suggest which ones are more worthy of consideration:

* Detterbeck, S.; Morandini, P.; Bachmair, A.; Wetterauer, B. and MacWilliams, H.K. (1994). The "prespore-like cells" of Dictyostelium no longer express prespore genes: use of a labile reporter to distinguish current and past gene activity. Development 120, 2847-2855

* Manstein, D.J., Schuster, H.P., Morandini, P. and Hunt, D. (1995) Cloning vectors for the production of proteins in Dictyostelium, Gene 162,129-134.

* Morandini P, Salamini F. (2003) Plant biotechnology and breeding: allied for years to come. Trends Plant Sci. 8:70-5

* Beekwilder J, van Leeuwen W, van Dam NM, Bertossi M, Grandi V, Mizzi L, Soloviev M, Szabados L, Molthoff JW, Schipper B, Verbocht H, de Vos RC, Morandini P, Aarts MG, Bovy A. (2008) The impact of the absence of aliphatic glucosinolates on insect herbivory in Arabidopsis. PLoS ONE. 3:e2068.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0002068

* Menges M, Dóczi R, Okrész L, Morandini P, Mizzi L, Soloviev M, Murray JA, Bögre L. (2008) Comprehensive gene expression atlas for the Arabidopsis MAP kinase signalling pathways. New Phytol. 179:643-62.

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/120776804/PDFSTART

* Morandini P., (2009) Rethinking Metabolic Control. Plant Science, 176:441-51.

doi:10.1016/j.plantsci.2009.01.005 (IF 1.79)

* Berri S., Abbruscato P., Faivre-Rampant O., Brasiliero A. C.M., Fumasoni I., Mizzi L., Satoh K., Kikuchi S., Morandini P., Pè M.E. and Piffanelli P. (2009) Characterization of WRKY co-regulatory networks in rice and Arabidopsis, BMC Plant Biol. 9:120 (22p.).

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2229/9/120

* Morandini P. (2009) Inactivation of allergens and toxins. New Biotechnology Jun 30. [Epub ahead of print]

(review from the proceedings of the conference organized by the Pontifical Academy of Science)

Teaching duties

Curriculum in Biotechnology

* Plant Industrial Biotechnology

* Plant Physiology (as part of the course ‘Biology and Physiology of Organisms’)

* Public Perception and Communication (now inactive)

Curriculum in Biology

* Laboratory of Experimental Biology