Emanuele Buratti, PhD
TDP-43, ALS and FTD Pre-clinical
Dr. Emanuele Buratti is a distinguished molecular biologist and biochemist, currently serving as the Group Leader of the Molecular Pathology Laboratory at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) in Trieste, Italy. He holds a B.Sc. in Biology and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Trieste. Since joining ICGEB in 1995, Dr. Buratti has made significant contributions to the understanding of RNA metabolism and its role in neurodegenerative diseases.
Since beginning his postdoctoral work, the principal areas of Dr. Buratti’s expertise have been the investigation of RNA binding proteins/structure and their influence on translation and alternative splicing processes. In 2001, as part of a research project on Cystic Fibrosis, he identified nuclear protein TDP-43 as a potential CFTR exon 9 pre-mRNA splicing regulator. As a result, in the following years he has performed several basic studies on the biochemical and functional properties of this protein that have been of great advantage to the scientific community when its role in neurodegeneration was first reported in 2006. Since then, Dr. Buratti research has primarily focused on investigating the potential pathophysiological role played by TDP-43 in Frontotemporal Dementia and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, and in better understanding the functional roles played by this protein (ie. microRNA biogenesis and splicing regulation, shuttling nuclear/cytosplamic properties, autoregulatory processes).