Stefano Gustincich

Biography

Stefano Gustincich obtained his PhD in Molecular Genetics & Biotechnology at SISSA, Trieste, Italy, studying genes involved in the negative control of cell proliferation. He was awarded a Long-term EMBO fellowship to work as a post-doctoral fellow at the department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA. He developed a transgenic mouse model to study the function of dopaminergic neurons of the retina, a rare neuronal cell type involved in the control of light adaptation. In 1998, he became Instructor in Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School where he developed techniques to study gene expression in single cells. He has been honoured with the career development award by The Giovanni Armenise-Harvard Foundation to join the Sector of Neurobiology at SISSA as a principal investigator. Since 2005 he has been an Associate professor in Physiology at SISSA. His laboratory applies functional genomics techniques to study brain function in health and disease with special emphasis on the dopaminergic neurons of the Substantia Nigra and Parkinson’s disease.

Research Interest

Blood transcriptomics of Parkinson's Disease ,The transcriptional landscape of dopaminergic cells ,The function of Hemoglobin in dopaminergic cells ,SINEUPS: a new functional class of long non-coding RNAs ,RNA therapeutics ,The role of repetitive elements in brain function.