Bacterial polysaccharides (Prof. Cescutti)

Paola Cescutti

Associate Professor in Biochemistry (BIO/10)

Tel: +39 040 5588755

Fax: +39 040 5582134 att. Dr. Paola Cescutti

Email: pcescutti@units.it

 

Biosketch

Paola Cescutti is Assistant Professor in Biochemistry at the University of Trieste. She got a Laurea degree in Biology (with honours) and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Trieste. During her Ph.D. she spent 2 years at the Dept. of Chemistry of the University of British Columbia (Canada). Afterwards, she spent 1 year as a post Doc at the United States Department of Agriculture (Wyndmoor, PA). She was visiting scientist at the Department of Biological Sciences of the University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada) in 2010.

Her research interest focuses on the primary structure of natural polysaccharides, mainly of bacterial origin, and on their structure-function relationships. Recently, most of the activity is centred on polysaccharides produced in biofilms by opportunistic pathogens bacteria causing infections in humans.

Among her main contribution to the field:

  • the use of phage enzymes for the site-specific degradation of bacterial polysaccharides;
  • the full structural characterization of the many exopolysaccharides produced by the Burkholderia cepacia complex;
  • the structural characterisation of capsular polysaccharides produced by Klebsiella pneumoniae;
  • the interactions occurring between biofilm bacterial polysaccharides and quorum sensing molecules.

Dr. Cescutti published 82 articles in international scientific journals.

She is in the Editorial Board of the scientific journal Carbohydrate Research and acts as a reviewer also for other international scientific journals in the field of carbohydrates.

Info

Last update: 10-11-2024 - 23:30