Phd in CELL AND DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY

email: giulia.delorenzo@uniroma1.it
phone: 49912517 49912641
building: CU022 - Botanica

Prof. Giulia De Lorenzo
Dipartimento di Biologia e Biotecnologie C. Darwin
Universita’ di Roma “La Sapienza”, Piazzale Aldo Moro, 5
I-00185 Roma, Italy
Tel..: +39-06-4991-2517 o 2641
Fax: +39-06-4991-2446
E-mail: giulia.delorenzo@uniroma1.it

EDUCATION
1980: Laurea Degree cum laude in Biology (University of Rome La Sapienza)
1987: Ph.D. in Evolutionary Biology (La Sapienza)

SCIENTIFIC CAREER
1987-1988: NATO-CNR Post-doc fellow at the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center (Giorgia, USA)
1989: Researcher (ENICHEM Agricoltura)
1990-1991: Researcher (ENEA Casaccia)
1991-1994: Associate Professor of Plant Biochemistry (University of Bari)
1994-1999: Associate Professor of Plant Physiology (University La Sapienza)
2000-today: Full Professor of Plant Physiology (University La Sapienza)

AWARDS, RECOGNITIONS AND OTHER TITLES
1983: Fondazione V.V. Landi Award, Accademia dei Lincei
1991: FESPP (The Federation of European Societies of Plant Physiology) Award
1994: Baccarini Melandri Award of the Italian Society of Plant Physiology (SIFV)
1997: Giovanni Armenise-Harvard Foundation Award for Basic Agriculture Research
1997-2005: Member of the Scientific Committee of the Armenise-Harvard Foundation;
2007-2009: Senior Editor of the Journal Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions;
2007-2010: Member of the Evaluation Committee of the Facoltà di Scienze Matematiche, Fisiche e Naturale dell'Università di Roma Sapienza
2011-August: Senior editor of the International Journal Frontiers in Plant Science, Section Plant-Microbe Interaction
2011-2013: Member of the Scientific Committee of the Armenise-Harvard Foundation;
Nov 2011 and Nov 2014: Award of Sapienza, Università di Roma for Excellence in Research
2011-August 2014: Associate Editor of “Frontiers in Plant-Science”
September 2014 – March 2016 -Editor-in-Chief of “Frontiers in Plant Science”– Section Plant-Microbe Interactions, now renamed Plant Biotic Interactions
2014: Award Grant, Sapienza University, Rome
2015: Elected Member of the Academia Europeae
January 2016-2021: President of the Scientific Committee of the Edmund Mach Foundation, S. Michele all’Adige (Trento), Italy
2017: National Award of the “Accademia delle Scienze di Torino” for Plant Biology
October 2017: Coordinator of the Ph.D. School in Cell and Developmental Biology - Sapienza
April 2021: Coordinator of the Monitoring Committee - research section of the Faculty of Sciences MFN, Sapienza

REVIEW ACTIVITIES FOR SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS AND RESEARCH BODIES
Reviewer for Plant Cell, PNAS, Plant Physiology, Plant Journal, BMC Plant Biology, Physiological and Molecular Plant Pathology, Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions, Gene, Plant Molecular Biology, Planta.
Reviewer for the evaluation of international and national projects. He was part of the register of CIVR experts.

ORGANIZATION OF RESEARCH AND FUNDING
Scientific director and coordinator of several projects: Accademia dei Lincei (Contribution VV Landi), NATO-CNR (bilateral with the University of Georgia, 1993), CNR (PF RAISA, PF Biotechnology), Ministry of Agricultural Policies (Plant Biotechnology Project) ; UE (EU-BRIDGE), MIUR-FIRB (2001, 2003-Laboratori, ERA-PG 2007), Armenise-Harvard Foundation for Agriculture 1997, Major University Projects (2007-2009), MIUR-COFIN (COFIN 1990- 2000, 2002-2003, 2005-2006; 2009-2010; 2017-2020).

ORGANIZATION OF CONFERENCES AND SCIENTIFIC SCHOOLS
Member of the scientific committee of the international conference PLANT BIOLOGY EUROPE 2021 (28th June - 01st July 2021).
Member of the scientific committee of the international conference The XIII Cell Wall Meeting - Nantes, France - 7 Jul 2013 → 12 Jul 2013.
Organizes, with Dr. Jonathan Jones, the EMBO conference “Specificity and recognition in plant disease resistance gene function” (Maratea 10-20 May 1997).
Member of the organizing scientific committee of the X Cell Wall Meeting (Sorrento, 29 August-3 September 2004).
Member of the organizing committee of the 2nd Solanaceae “Genome Workshop” (Sorrento, 25-29 September 2005).
It organizes the summer school of the Italian Society of Plant Physiology "Plant Hormones in Action" (Acquafredda di Maratea).

TEACHING ACTIVITY
Since 1989 she has been carrying out an intense didactic activity, giving university courses in the field of plant biology. She directed the experimental work of qualified students of Italian and foreign doctoral degree courses and post-doctoral scholars, some of whom have successfully continued their scientific careers [Renato D’Ovidio, full professor at the University of Tuscia, Viterbo; Alessandra Devoto, Senior Lecturer, University of London; Claudio Caprari, associate professor, University of Molise; Benedetta Mattei, researcher, Plant Biology Dept., La Sapienza; Luca Federici, associate professor, University of Chieti; Alessandro Raiola, researcher, University of Padua; Simone Ferrari, researcher, Plant Biology Dept., La Sapienza; Adele Di Matteo, researcher, Dept. Biochemistry, La Sapienza; Angiola Desiderio and Cristina Capodicasa, ENEA-Casaccia researchers]. She was a member of the teaching Board of the Doctoral School in Botanical Sciences. Since 2010 she has been a member of the teaching Board of the Doctorate in Cellular and Developmental Biology, which she coordinates since October 2017.

SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITY
Since the initial training in Evolutionary Biology, her activity is focused on plant responses to biotic stress and mechanical damage. She pioneered the studies on the molecular recognition events between plants and fungal pathogens that take place in the plant extracellular matrix (cell wall) and trigger the plant defense responses. Several important achievements indicate her ability to go off the beaten paths and generate knowledge beyond the state of the art. She identified and characterized a recognition/transduction mechanism involving microbial polygalacturonases (PGs), their plant inhibitors PGIPs (Polygalacturonase-Inhibiting Proteins) and oligogalacturonides (OGs), a class of damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) deriving from the fragmentation of the cell wall polysaccharides (Plant Physiol 1987, 85:626, 90 citations; Plant Physiol 1987, 85:631, 140 citations; Physiol. Plantarum, 1988, 72:499, 143 citations; Plant Physiol 1989, 90:542, 303 citations). The model represented by the interaction between PGs and PGIPs and the release of elicitor-active oligogalacturonides is included in one of the most important advanced textbooks of plant biology (Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of Plants by Buchanan, Gruissem and Jones). Next important step of her career was the cloning of the gene encoding PGIP, the first plant leucine-rich repeat (LRR) protein ever identified and characterized at the genetic, biochemical and physiological level (Plant J 1992, 2:367, 221 citations; Plant J 1994, 5: 625; 127 citations; PNAS 2001, 98: 13425, 123 citations; PNAS 2003, 100:10124, 198 citations). The elucidation of the 3D structure of PGIP is considered a main breakthrough achievement, being this protein a prototypical example of the class of plant LRR proteins playing the function of recognition of “non-self” molecules in immunity and regulatory signals in development. She elucidated some important aspects of the molecular co-evolution of PGs and PGIPs. How these proteins interact and evolve remains a model for the recognition function of plant LRR proteins and their important roles in defense and development (EMBO Journal, 1999, 18:2352, 214 citations; Ann Rev Phytopathol 2001, 39: 313, 336 citations; PNAS 2009, 106: 7666, 48 citations). Another key contribution pertains to the mode of action and effects of OGs in plant innate immunity and development (Plant J 1993, 4:207, 83 citations, Plant Cell 1996, 8:477, 94 citations). In the last years the signaling pathway regulated by this class of DAMPs has been studied in detail and compared to that regulated by microbe-associated molecular patterns (MAMPS). She identified the wall-associated kinase 1 (WAK1) of Arabidopsis as the receptor for OGs (PNAS, 2010, 107: 616, 197 citations) by setting up a domain swap pioneering approach (see patent PCT EP2010/057845) that allowed to overcome the problems of functional redundancy and lethality encountered in this study. A relevant recent achievement is the engineering of a protein fusion, named OG-machine (OGM) for a tailored release of OGs in planta (PNAS USA, 2015, 112, 5533-5538; 12 citations). The OGM is a unique tool to deepen our understanding of the role of OGs in plant immunity and development. The most recent publications of her lab indicate that the OG signaling cascade plays a crucial role not only in the response of the plant to biotic and abiotic stress but also in regulating growth and responses to hormones; it represents a first line monitoring system that allows the plant to cope with a changing environment and stress. The latest research line focuses on the elucidation of the role of OGs and cell-wall derived damage-associated molecylar patterns (DAMPs) and their homeostasis in the defense against pathogens.
The scientific activity of Prof. De Lorenzo is documented in more than 140 research paper, most of them published in peer-reviewed journals and 29 chapters in International books.

As a plant biologist Giulia De Lorenzo has an excellent track record
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.it/citations?hl=it&user=eUIhXXUAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate
ORCID ID: 0000-0002-1707-5418;
WoS AI=F-5475-2013

GOOGLE SCHOLAR 11474 citations, h index = 58, i10-index 114 (3612, 30 and 69, respectively, since 2015);
[WOS (ID: F-5475-2013; 137 publications: h-index 47; total citations 7127)]