Alessandra Oberto got her master’s degree in biology (1991) and a PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology (1996) at the University of Torino.
In 1991 she was Guest Researcher in the Lab of Cellular and Molecular Biology, NIH Bethesda, and from 1993 to 1994 she was Visiting Fellow at Georgetown University in Dr. Kruger lab and from 1994 to 1996 at Nathan S. Kline Institute (NYU) Center for Neuropharmacology under the supervision of Dr. Guidotti.
In 1999, thanks to a “Marie Curie Research Training Grant”, Alessandra worked as Postdoc Fellow at the MRC in Cambridge in the Lab of Molecular Biology under the supervision of Dr Wisden. She was involved in in situ hybridization analysis and generation of knock-out mice using homologous recombination in ES cells.
From 2001 to 2003 she joined the Lab of Molecular Neurobiology at the MPI in Heidelberg, under the supervision of Dr Sprengel, to generate conditional Y1R KO mice and Y1RVenus/Y5RtTA transgenic mice.
From March 2001 Alessandra is Assistant professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Turin, Dep of Neuroscience Rita Levi Montalcini and from 2010 she joined NICO as part of the Neuropsychopharmacology group.
Research focus
The main research focus has been the generation of Y1R conditional knock-out mice and modification of the Y1 and Y5 receptor genes to create mouse models for the study of the role of Y1R for NPY in the limbic system. This contributed to the development of several project focused on the study of the neuroregulation and neuroprotective effect of NPY via its Y1R in neurological condition sach as anxiety, stress and eating disorders.
Behavior analysis is one of the main topics of our group and we have studied maternal care as a tool to study the epigenetic modification of the Y1R gene.
More recently the interest was directed on the role of NPYergic transmission in estrogen-dependent energy metabolism in female mice.
Currently the investigation of the development and expression of perineuronal networks as a possible target for identifying new therapies for fragile X and other epileptic sindroms are under our attention.
