Alberto Pallavicini

Professor Alberto Pallavicini hold a B.S. degree in Biology from the University of Padua with a thesis entitled “Cloning of globin mRNAs expressed in L. zanandreai before and after metamorphosis.”. Post-lauream training, Ph.D in Genetics and two years post-doc at CRIBI Biotechnology Center (University of Padua) in the Functional Genomics Unit (headed by Prof. Gerolamo Lanfranchi) and in the Genomics and Bioinformatics Units (headed by Prof. Giorgio Valle).
Prof. Pallavicini has more than 20 years of research and managerial experience in academic environment with emphasis on molecular biology, population genetics, transcriptomics and bioinformatics analysis, comparative and functional genomics. His research interest in the last two decades focused on the genomics of non model organisms, first of all the marine invertebrate Mytilus galloprovincialisa biomarker of water pollution anda model for comparative immunology studies. Among his main contribution to this field there is the definition of the mussel transcriptome and whole genome expression analysis of mussels challenged with biotic and abiotic stressors. Major achievements of these studies have been: a) the identification of an antimicrobial peptide with high sequence variability in the population of M. galloprovincialis, b) the identification of C1q domain containing proteins in mussel and the expansion of this protein family in the bivalve genomes, c) the discovery of several secreted short peptides with antimicrobial or other activities.
Professor Pallavicini published more than 100 papers in international scientific journals and he is also holder of a patent for genetic analysis of cofeee species.