Synaptic Omeostasis Lab - SOL (Dr. Fornasiero)

Research Strand:

RtdB Researcher in Physiology - BIO/9

Office: Fondazione Callerio, first floor, room 105A
Phone: 040 558 8777
Mail: EUGENIO.FORNASIERO@units.it

Dr. Eugenio Fornasiero is a part-time researcher in Physiology at the DSV as of February 2022, and is currently concurrently laboratory director at the Department of Neuro- and Sensory Physiology, University Medical Center in Göttingen, Germany. After graduating with a degree in Medical Biotechnology from the University of Modena in 2005, Dr. Fornasiero was awarded a doctorate in Prof. Flavia Valtorta's laboratory in 2010 as part of the international Molecular and Cellular Biology program shared by San Raffaele University of Milan and the Open University (UK). Dr. Fornasiero worked at the laboratory of Prof. Carlos Dotti at the VIB in Leuven (Belgium) and completed his postdoctoral training at the laboratory of Prof. Silvio O. Rizzoli in Göttingen (Germany).

Info

Research

My lab is interested in presynaptic physiology, focusing on the mechanisms that regulate neuronal development and aging.

Proteins are essential cellular components. Their production and degradation (their turnover) pose a number of complex challenges to biological systems.

What are the mechanisms that regulate protein turnover in the brain? Are there general principles underlying this complex balance?

My laboratory is currently developing technologies that will help answer these questions. The overall goal is to elucidate the molecular principles underlying protein turnover in the brain, with a focus on the development and aging of neurons. We are working on a variety of labeling techniques, including microscopy and mass spectrometry technologies, to assess protein stability and replacement in vitro and in vivo in different model systems.

We have previously optimized pulse labeling techniques in vivo and combined them with mathematical modeling to study brain protein turnover (Fornasiero et al.; 2018). We are interested in the overall regulatory mechanisms underlying the regulation of protein turnover and have found an interesting link between the use of wobble nucleotides and protein stability (Mandad et al.; 2018). More broadly, we are interested in the molecular aspects that regulate synaptic vesicle recycling, stability, trafficking, and recycling during neuronal activity (Truckenbrodt et al.; 2018).

Projects and collaborations

Current projects in the lab aim to:

- Investigate the principles governing synaptic vesicle biogenesis and degradation using state-of-the-art microscopy.

- Clarify the biological processes underlying brain aging using multiomics and bioinformatics approaches.

- To study the basis of macromolecular turnover in the brain, with a focus on neuronal development and physiology.

In the future, we will extend the use of metabolic labeling to other model organisms and biological conditions and explore the possibility of using pulse labeling techniques to address a more general set of dynamic questions in brain biology.

People

International collaborations

Germania:

- Prof. Silvio O. Rizzoli (University Medical School, Göttingen)

- Dr. Felipe Opazo (Center of Biostructural Imaging of Neurodegeneration, Göttingen)

- Dr. Alessandro Ori (Leibniz Institute on Aging, Jena)

- Dr. Andrej Shevchenko (MPI-CBG, Dresden)

USA:

- Prof. Marko Jovanovic (Columbia University, New York)

- Prof. Yansheng Liu (Yale University, New Haven)

- Prof. Jeffrey N. Savas (Northwestern University, Chicago)

- Prof. Prof. Lars Plate (Vanderbilt University, Nashville)

Publications

Full list of publications of the PI

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Pubblicazioni selezionate

Fornasiero E.F.; Savas J.N. Determining and interpreting protein lifetimes in mammalian tissues. Trends Biochem Sci. 2023, Feb;48(2):106-118. doi: 10.1016/j.tibs.2022.08.011.
Kluever V.; Russo B.; Mandad S.; Kumar N.H.; Alevra M.; Ori A.; Rizzoli S.O.; Urlaub H.; Schneider A.; Fornasiero E.F. Protein lifetimes in aged brains reveal a proteostatic adaptation linking physiological aging to neurodegeneration. Sci Adv. 2022, May 20;8(20):eabn4437. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abn4437.
Wu, C.; Ba, Q.; Lu, D.; Li, W.; Salovska, B.; Hou, P.; Mueller, T.; Rosenberger, G.; Gao, E.; Di, Y.; et al. Global and Site-Specific Effect of Phosphorylation on Protein Turnover. Dev. Cell 2021, 56, 111-124.e6, doi:10.1016/j.devcel.2020.10.025.
Reshetniak, S.; Ußling, J.-E.; Perego, E.; Rammner, B.; Schikorski, T.; Fornasiero, E.F.; Truckenbrodt, S.; Köster, S.; Rizzoli, S.O. A Comparative Analysis of the Mobility of 45 Proteins in the Synaptic Bouton. EMBO J. 2020, 39, e104596, doi:10.15252/embj.2020104596.
Alevra, M.; Mandad, S.; Ischebeck, T.; Urlaub, H.; Rizzoli, S.O.; Fornasiero, E.F. A Mass Spectrometry Workflow for Measuring Protein Turnover Rates in Vivo. Nat. Protoc. 2019, 14, 3333–3365, doi:10.1038/s41596-019-0222-y.
Keihani, S.; Kluever, V.; Mandad, S.; Bansal, V.; Rahman, R.; Fritsch, E.; Gomes, L.C.; Gärtner, A.; Kügler, S.; Urlaub, H.; [..]; Fornasiero, E.F. The Long Noncoding RNA NeuroLNC Regulates Presynaptic Activity by Interacting with the Neurodegeneration-Associated Protein TDP-43. Sci. Adv. 2019, 5, eaay2670, doi:10.1126/sciadv.aay2670.
Mandad, S.; Rahman, R.-U.; Centeno, T.P.; Vidal, R.O.; Wildhagen, H.; Rammner, B.; Keihani, S.; Opazo, F.; Urban, I.; Ischebeck, T. [..]; Fornasiero, E.F. The Codon Sequences Predict Protein Lifetimes and Other Parameters of the Protein Life Cycle in the Mouse Brain. Sci. Rep. 2018, 8, 16913, doi:10.1038/s41598-018-35277-8.
Truckenbrodt, S.; Viplav, A.; Jähne, S.; Vogts, A.; Denker, A.; Wildhagen, H.; Fornasiero, E.F.; Rizzoli, S.O. Newly Produced Synaptic Vesicle Proteins Are Preferentially Used in Synaptic Transmission. EMBO J. 2018, 37, e98044, doi:10.15252/embj.201798044.
Fornasiero, E.F.; Mandad, S.; Wildhagen, H.; Alevra, M.; Rammner, B.; Keihani, S.; Opazo, F.; Urban, I.; Ischebeck, T.; Sakib, M.S.; et al. Precisely Measured Protein Lifetimes in the Mouse Brain Reveal Differences across Tissues and Subcellular Fractions. Nat. Commun. 2018, 9, 4230, doi:10.1038/s41467-018-06519-0.
Fornasiero, E.F.; Opazo, F. Super-Resolution Imaging for Cell Biologists. BioEssays 2015, 37, 436–451, doi:10.1002/bies.201400170.

Last update: 09-19-2025 - 23:30

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