Giovanni Ciotta
Education
| 2001-2006 | student, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy. |
| 2007-present | PhD student, Genomics department, Biotechnological center of Technical University of Dresden (scientific supervisor Prof. F. Stewart), Dresden, Germany. |
Degrees
| 2006, July | Master in Biotechnologies applied for Industry and Scientific Research, Department of Experimental Oncology and Clinical Applications (D.O.S.A.C), University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy. Major score: 110/110, Overall score: 110/110. Graduated cum laude and Honors. |
| 2004, July | Bachelor in Biotechnologies, Department of Cellular and Development Biology, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy. Major score: 110/110, Overall score: 110/110. Graduated cum laude. |
Research Experience
| 2007, May ? present | PhD student, Genomics department, Biotechnological center of Technical University of Dresden, Dresden, Germany. Principal Investigators: Prof. Francis Stewart. PhD project title: Tagging methods for proteomics and regulomics in mouse embryonic and neural stem cells. |
| 2004-2006 | Master student, Department of Experimental Oncology and Clinical Applications (D.O.S.A.C), University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy. Principal investigator: Prof. Feo S. Master Thesis project title: Elaboration of a genomic microarray for identification of amplified genes in breast cancer. |
| 2001-2004 | Bachelor student, Department of Cellular and Development Biology, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy. Principal investigator: Prof. Spinelli G. Bachelor Thesis project title: study of the chromatin in sea urchin embryos. |
Research Topic
Simple and efficient methodologies that are amenable to high-throughput approaches for the purification of proteins and protein complexes are constantly needed for Proteomics. As a result, a number of generic affinity-based methodologies have been developed for these purposes, based primarily on the use of specific antibodies or affinity tags that are fused to the protein of interest. One of the techniques used for the isolation of protein complexes is the tandem affinity purification (TAP) tag method. The widespread utilization of this method has been very successful in yeast. The development of a TAP method in mammalians allows a rapid purification of proteins for ChIP?ing (genome wide ChIP on chip and ChIP-sequencing) and Mass Spectrometry. The most prominent among the affinity-based purification methodologies is the GFP system. My research topic is focused on developing, optimizing and validating the GFP tagging strategy for in vivo detection, affinity purification, Chromatin Immunoprecipitation (ChIP) and Protein Immunoprecipitation. Our group is interested in Epigenetics and histone methylation, particularly, plays critical roles in many epigenetic phenomena. H3K4 methyltransferase complexes are very important in such direction. Proteomics and Regulomics data on these complexes can be obtained via GFP tagging. Fusion genes can be easily constructed by recombineering and GFP tagged proteins are firstly expressed in E14tg2A mouse embryonic stem cell line (ESC). ESCs are then differentiated in Neural Stem Cells (NSCs) in order to understand how fusion proteins behave in different cell lineages.
Publications
Ciotta, G., Hofemeister, H., Maresca, M., Fu, J., Sarov, M., Anastassiadis, K. and Stewart, A. F. (2010). "Recombineering BAC transgenes for protein tagging." Methods.
Hofemeister, H., Ciotta, G., Fu, J., Seibert, P. M., Schulz, A., Maresca, M., Sarov, M., Anastassiadis, K. and Stewart, A. F. (2010). "Recombineering, transfection, Western, IP and ChIP methods for protein tagging via gene targeting or BAC transgenesis." Methods.
