Curriculum

 Prof.ssa Barbara Basso

Barbara Basso graduated with honours in Biological Sciences in 1976 at the University of Milan with a graduation thesis on the anatomy of Posidonia oceanica. Winner of a National Research Council grant, she conducted studies on vegetable anatomy and physiology at the Institute of Botany, University of Milan. From 1982 she was researcher at the National Research Council, performing her activities as member of the N.R.C.’s Institute of Biophysics (former Centre for Studies on Plant Cell and Molecular Biology) in the field of physiology and vegetable biochemistry at the Department of Biology, University of Milan. From 1988 to 1990 she spent an attachment period at the N.C.R.’s Institute of Vegetable Biosynthesis where she improved her knowledge of genetics and vegetable molecular biology with studies on the isolation, ingeneerization and expression of encoding genes for zein, a reserve protein of corn. Between 1990 and 1992, she developed a project on isolation, characterization and sequencing of an encoding gene for potato’s 5-lipoxygenase, a protein of pharmacological interest, in the framework of collaboration with the Institute of Pharmacological Sciences, University of Milan. She then continued her studies of molecular biology and genetics on plants of agricultural interest (corn and tomato) using methods of cloning through molecular markers and transposons. Since 2000 she has conducted studies increasingly focused on the application of genetics and vegetable biotechnologies in the agronomic and biomedical field. In particular, she is in charge of two research trends: a) transformation of plants for the production of immunogenic proteins; b) study targeted at transforming apple tree rootstock to defend the plant from the larvae of phytophagous insects. For the past five years she has been Professor of Vegetable Biology at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine.