Professor Paola Paola Bonfante
Professor of Plant Biology, University of Turin
Professor Emerita of Plant Biology at the University of Torino, she has dedicated her scientific activity to fungal-plant associations, called "mycorrhizae", symbioses that involve most of land plants with significant impacts on ecosystems, as well as on agriculture. Moving from the description of mycorrhizal typologies occurring in land plants, she has then focused her attention to plant- arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal interactions with the aim to understand how beneficial microbes may be relevant tools for developing a more sustainable agriculture.
Using cellular and molecular biology and next generation sequencing techniques, she has contributed to the knowledge of the biological-functional diversity of mycorrhizal fungi and how they communicate and interact with their host plant. She discovered endobacteria living inside mycorrhizal fungi and with omics approaches she has described how they modulate some functional traits of their fungal and plant hosts. She belongs to Accademia dei Lincei (Rome), Academy of Sciences (Torino), French Academy of Agriculture, and European Academy. She has been among the most cited researchers in the world (Highly Cited Researchers 2017, 2018, 2020 Clarivate Analytics), is in the list of top Italian scientists, has been appointed Commander (“Commendatore”) of the “Order of Merit of the Italian Republic” by the President of Italy (2019) and has received the international award Adam Kondorosi (2021). She has written a book of scientific dissemination on plant-microbe interactions: No Plant Is an Island. Discovering an Invisible World.
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https://www.dbios.unito.it/do/docenti.pl/Show?_id=pbonfant#tab-profilo