Marco Maria D’Andrea
Associate Professor of the Department of Biology of the Rome University of “Tor Vergata”.
I graduated in Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technologies at the University of Siena with a thesis regarding the construction of a plasmid for the production of antibodies in Fab format in Escherichia coli. During my work of thesis, also thanks to the passion and patient guidance of my supervisor, Prof. Gian Maria Rossolini, and of Prof. Maria Cristina Thaller, involved in the project, I became more and more keen on Microbiology and microorganisms, which I think are one of the most sophisticated and powerful “Chemistry Labs” that can exist. After my thesis I continued my path of Microbiologist with a Ph.D. in Medical Biotechnology at the University of Siena, mainly developing DNA chips for genotyping of antibiotic resistance determinants in bacteria. I had the opportunity to study the mechanisms that lead to this phenomenon in bacterial isolates of clinical origin in depth, to evaluate their diffusion in the hospital environment and, at the same time, to participate in several national and international research projects. Subsequently, I have undertaken a new and stimulating collaboration with the “Ecomicro” group, with the aim of isolate and characterize bacteriophages able to selectively kill some of the multi-resistant bacterial clones circulating in hospital environments. To date, this is the main research line of my laboratory.
Since my Ph.D. period I have had teaching duties for Microbiology and Bioinformatics courses and I am currently a Contract Professor at the University of Siena (module of Bioinformatics in Clinical Microbiology, Integrated Course of Clinical Microbiology, Master’s Degree in Medical Biotechnologies) and at the University of Rome Tor Vergata (course of Genomics and Bioinformatics of Microorganisms, Master’s Degree in Bioinfomatics).
Currently, as an associate professor (BIOS-15A) at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, I am co- holder of the General Microbiology module in the integrated course of General Microbiology and Virology held for the three-year degree in Biotechnology, holder of the course of Genomics and Bioinformatics of Microorganisms, held for the Master’s degree in Bioinformatics and holder of the module of Bacterial Genetics for the specialization school of Microbiology and Virology.
I have always been enthusiast about computer science, a discipline that I have widely exploited in several areas of my work and of my research, and that today I exploit in particular for microbiology studies using Next Generation Sequencing approaches.