Personal Born in Rovereto (TN, Italy) on 14th March 1968. October 2006 - now: Associate Professor of Botany, Department of Biology, University of Padova. December 1998-September 2006: Research scientist (ricercatore) of Plant Physiology, Department of Biology, University of Padova. October 1997 – December 1998: Post-doc in Prof. G. Casadoro’s laboratory, Department of Biology, University of Padova. Education 11.11.1992 MS in Biology, University of Padova. 9.7.1997. Ph.D. in Evolutionary Biology, University of Padova. International experience January-December 1993. Period of permanence in the "Instut fuer Pflanzengenetik und Kulturpflanzenforschung” (Gatersleben, Germany) in the Dr. Grimm's laboratory. I have worked on chlorophyll biosynthesis preparing and using antisense tobacco plants. March 1 - June 30, 1995. Period of permanence at the Carlsberg Laboratory (Copenhagen, Denmark) in the Department of Physiology, guest of Prof. Diter von Wettstein. April 12 - May 22 1999. Period of permanence at the Department of Botany and Plant Physiology in the Dr. Anita Wallin's laboratory. July 9 - August 26, 2008. Period of permanence at the Department of Chemistry, Dartmouth College, 6128 Burke Laboratory, Hanover, NH 03755, USA, guest of prof. Dale F. Mierke. Research interests The main research interest is the investigation of the genetic, molecular and physiological mechanisms regulating fleshy fruit development and ripening. I am convinced that, by unraveling the biological mechanisms that govern this process, in the future we could produce fruit of better quality, with a better taste, with improved nutritional properties, lasting longer after harvest and needing less energy, water and economic resources to be produced and to reach consumers’ table. In the past years, I developed transcriptomics platforms for peach, still used to investigate the regulation of ripening in Prunus species. Gene and hormonal regulatory networks were, are, and are going to be, explored in order to identify candidate genes to be used in Marker Assisted Selection programs carried out by breeders and, hopefully soon, as targets for genome editing. I determined the function of several transcription factor genes involved in fruit development and ripening. More recently, I ran into signaling peptides and was fascinated by this class of molecules with faceted actions that opens the possibility to play around with natural molecules to regulate, among others, also the ripening process. At present, the function of short secreted signaling peptides during fruit ripening is the main topic of my research activities. Besides peach, my favorite plants are strawberry, tomato, apple and pear. Of course I use also model systems such as Arabidopsis and tobacco. Indeed, the latter are used, with other species, also to develop biotechnological approaches for the production of valuable compounds which is a life-long dream that is slowly but constantly coming to reality thank to the collaboration with a couple of private companies. In collaboration with ABR Active Botanicals Research (www.abres.it) I am developing molecules for the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical and cosmetic industries. Scientific production According to the Scopus database, L. Trainotti authored 57 publications that, up to 19th June 2018, have been cited by 1193 documents. The h-index is 21. Publication list at http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8829-8205

Curriculum PDF File

Genetic and molecular processes controlling fleshy fruit development and ripening Plant cell cultures for the production of industrial and food biomolecules

1) Role of peptide hormones and their receptors on the control of fleshy fruit ripening 2) Development of plat cell cultures for the production of biomolecules useful as drugs or nutraceuticals

Last update: 23/06/2025