Associate professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Napoli Federico II (Italy). In 1989 she received the PhD in Chemical Sciences at the University of Napoli Federico II. She worked in 1995 at the Institut de Génétique et de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire, Strasbourg, France and in 1996 at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Hamburg, Germany. The research activity has been focused on the structure determination of proteins by X-ray crystallography, the study of structure-function relationship and flexibility of protein molecules in solution using spectroscopic techniques and molecular dynamics simulations. In the last few years the activity has succesfully involved the study of oligonucleotides adopting a G-quagruplex structure in the free and liganded state. In particular, the structural and dynamic characterization of binary and ternary complexes, which are formed by thrombin and aptamers specific for exosite I and/or exosite II, has provided a clear picture of the recognition process between thrombin and its aptamers.

Crystallography
spectroscopy
proteins
nucleic acids
molecular recognition