The science

My scientific interest lies at the intersection of molecular biology, development and epigenetics. I am currently studying the molecular mechanisms underlying chromatin-based non-genetic inheritance via the female germline, a topic with broad and compelling implications for female reproductive health, fertility and offspring fitness.

My fascination for molecular biology began during my undergraduate degree in Biology, while studying the fundamental mechanisms and complex molecular machineries that orchestrate gene expression in a cell, as well as the fine, yet powerful, regulatory roles carried out by small RNAs. This really ignited my desire to pursue a research career in science and compelled me to join a lab as an undergraduate researcher.

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During my master thesis internship, I delved into the world of RNA molecular biology in the group of Prof. Irene Bozzoni at Sapienza University, characterising long noncoding RNAs involved in neuronal differentiation. I then joined as a Research Assistant the lab of Prof. Richard Gregory at Harvard Medical School, where I explored the mechanisms of RNA metabolism in mouse embryonic stem cells. During this time, we uncovered a role of the exonuclease Dis3l2 in the quality control of a group of noncoding RNAs (Pirouz et al., 2016) and dissected the roles of various exonucleases in the biogenesis and surveillance of ribosomal RNAs (Pirouz et al., 2019).

In 2016, I joined Prof. Greg Hannon's lab at the University of Cambridge to pursue a PhD, during which I investigated a class of small noncoding RNAs (the Piwi-interacting RNAs, or piRNAs) that mediate silencing of parasitic genomic invaders (namely, transposable elements) in the female gonads of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. My work spanned the biogenesis of piRNAs (Munafò et al., 2019), the export and processing of their precursor transcripts (Kneuss et al., 2019; Munafò et al., 2021) and their function in  epigenetic silencing of transposon loci (Fabry et al., 2019). 

Finally, for my postdoc I wanted to dig deeper into the epigenetic mechanisms acting in the mammalian female germline and on the non-genetic payload that is transferred to the next generation via the oocyte. Therefore, since 2020 I have been working in the group of Dr. Jamie Hackett at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Rome, where I currently still am. Over the past four years, I have been combining my interest in molecular biology with the lab’s expertise in (epi)genomics and developmental biology to build new tools to investigate the functional roles of chromatin modification during oogenesis and as carriers of heritable information across generations.