PhD in CELLULAR AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

email: luana.licata@uniroma2.it
phone: 06 7259 4315
building: SOGENE
room: 315

Education and training

1999  D.Sci. Master Degree in Biology, University of Palermo, Italy

2004 Ph.D. in Biochemistry, Dept. of Structural Biology, Max Plank Institute of Biophysics, Frankfurt am Main, Germany issued by the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Employment

1999 Visiting Scientist at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, Rangos Research Centre, Pittsburgh,

Pennsylvania, United States.

2006 Consultant at the Research and Technology Development Service (SDRR), Food & Agriculture

Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), Rome

2006-2007 Post Doc Position in Bioinformatics, Dept. of Biology, University of Rome Tor Vergata,

Rome (Italy)

2008-2009 Consultant at the Agriculture Department, Crop and Grassland service (AGPC), Food &

Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), Rome.

2008-2018 Research fellow position, Dept. of Biology, University of  Rome Tor Vergata, Rome (Italy), 2019-2022 RTDA, Dept. of Biology, University of Rome Tor Vergata

2022 Senior project coordinator, Human technopole, Milano

2022-present Assistant Professor, Dept. of Biology, University of Rome Tor Vergata.

Teaching

2017-present      Bioinformatic tools for the study and analysis of biological “Big Data”: from genomics to

proteomics, AAS, Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Biologia Cellulare e Molecolare and Corso di Laurea

Magistrale in Bioinformatics.

2023-present      Principles and data mining in human genetics, Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Biologia

Cellulare e Molecolare

Research interests

My scientific research activity focuses on the analysis of molecular interactions, both physical and causal, with the aim of understanding molecular mechanisms in various pathological contexts, such as cancer, infectious diseases, rare diseases and neurodevelopmental diseases. In particular, on the study of the impact of pathogenic variants on the function of proteins and their interactions, in order to identify the relationships between genotype and phenotype and characterize the molecular mechanisms underlying diseases to identify possible therapeutic strategies.

I am the scientific coordinator of the bioinformatic resource MINT, the Molecular INTeraction database (ELIXIR Core Data Resources and Global Core Biodata Resources) that provides standardized data on the physical interactions between biomolecules (proteins, nucleic acids, biomolecules and protein complexes).

I co-coordinate SIGNOR database, a resource that annotate causal and pathway relationships involving different biological entities (proteins, complexes, miRNAs, small molecules) and functionally link disease-associated genes via causal relationships.