RESEARCH FELLOW
giulia.giannetti(AT)ipsp.cnr.it
011.397.7927
publications: Orcid
personal details and research activity: People
Curriculum Vitae
Master’s degree in ‘Biology for molecular, cellular and pathophysiological research’ at the University of Roma Tre. During my experimental activity of thesis, carried out in the plant biotechnology laboratory, I characterized tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) mutant plants for one of the tomato polyamine oxidases genes (SlPAO3) obtained using the CRISPR/Cas9-based genome editing technology. Specifically, these loss-of-function mutants (slpao3) were subjected to phenotypic, molecular, anatomical, morphological and physiological analyses with the aim of investigating whether genetic manipulation of polyamine metabolism may improve the tolerance of these crop plants to abiotic stresses such as drought stress. In parallel, with the same purpose, I characterized also transgenic tomato plants constitutively overexpressing the polyamine oxidase gene of Arabidopsis thaliana (AtPAO5). The analyses performed included quantification of the number and size of xylem tissue elements, measurements of xylem conductivity, water potential, transpiration rate, relative water content (RWC) and the degree of susceptibility of plants to embolism by measuring the percentage loss of hydraulic conductivity (PLC). Currently, as a researcher at the IPSP in Turin, I am involved in the project “Do crop plants remember stress? Effect of water stress memory on crop resilience in response to recurrent drought and recovery events (REMIND)”, to study physiological, biochemical and molecular responses to repeated water stress events in grapevine and tomato plants, investigating stress memory phenomena associated with epigenetic modifications of the genome.