Assistant Professor
University of Udine
Department of Medical and Biological Sciences
Phone +39 0432 494322
Alessandra Corazza is, since 1999, Assistant Professor in Biophysics at the University of Udine.
She graduated in Physics in 1989 at the University of Bologna where her interests in Biophysics began. In 1993 she gained her PhD in Biophysics, at the University of Padova, where she was involved, using NMR and ESR spectroscopy, in the study of metallo-enzymes and in the design and structural characterisation of copper-peptides, able to display enzymatic properties. From March 1994 to April 1995 she was Assistant Researcher at Birkbeck College, Chemistry Department, University of London where, while continuing her studies on copper(I)-peptides, complexes she worked on anti-cancer drugs, analogue of cisplatin, bound to oligonucleotides and on the interaction of the oligonucleotide-cisplatin complex to Human High Mobility Group Protein 1.
In April 1995 she returned to the University of Padova with a post-doc position until 1999.
Since 1999 in Udine she carries out her research at the Biophysics laboratory, in the field of NMR spectroscopy and biophysics methodology for the study of biopolymers.
In the last fifteen years she was involved in studying amyloidogenic proteins both using NMR spectroscopy and computational methods. Beside solution structural determination of amyloidogenic proteins her interest is focused on the study of biochemical and biophysical factors that regulate protein folding and misfolding and that eventually lead to aggregation and fibril formation. On this topic, innovative NMR techniques have been used to characterize protein folding at atomic level.
Recently she investigated the role of gold nanoparticles in the fibril formation mechanism of amyloidogenic proteins.
She has various international scientific collaborations, and, on regular basis, particularly in the Netherlands at the University of Utrecht, in France at the Institut de Biologie Structurale, Grenoble and with the University of Liège, Belgium. She is member of the Italian Biophysics Society and of National Institute of Biosystems and Biostructures (INBB).
She is author of more than 60 publications.
Corazza A, Rennella E, P. Schanda, M.C. Mimmi, T.Cutuil, S. Raimondi, S. Giorgetti, F. Fogolari, P. Viglino, L. Frydman, M. Gal, V. Bellotti, B. Brutscher & G. Esposito “Native-unlike long-lived intermediates along the folding pathway of the amyloidogenic protein β2-microglobulin revealed by real time 2D NMR”(2010) J Biol Chem. 285, 5827-35.
Pagano K, Bemporad F, Fogolari F, Esposito G, Viglino P, Chiti F and Corazza A “Structural and dynamics characteristics of Acylphosphatase from Sulfolobus solfataricus in the monomeric state and in the initial native-like aggregates” (2010) J Biol Chem. 285, 14689-700.
Brancolini G, Corazza A, Vuano M, Fogolari F, Mimmi MC, Bellotti V, Stoppini M, Corni S, Esposito G. “Probing the influence of citrate-capped gold nanoparticles on an amyloidogenic protein.“ ACS Nano. 2015 Mar 24;9(3):2600-13.