Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection of the National Research Council of Italy, Italy
F. Di Serio, research director at the Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection of the National Research Council of Italy, focused his research activity on plant protection, mainly viruses and viroids. Viroids are small circular RNAs that do not code for any protein but may infect plants and cause diseases. Using viroids as model system, F. Di Serio has studied relationships between structure and function in non-coding RNAs and the role of RNA silencing in both plant anti-viroid defense and viroid pathogenesis. F. Di Serio has identified and characterized many novel viroid-like RNAs and plant viruses, some of which were recognized as representative members of new genera. Recently, he contributed to the discovery of a novel level of microbial biodiversity characterized by thousands of viroid-like RNAs endowed of ribozymatic activity, some of which coding for their own replicase. F. Di Serio is the Chair of the Study Group on Pospiviroidae and Avsunviroidae families of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) and Vice-Chair of the Plant Health Panel of the European Food Safety Authority (till next June 2024).
International symposium comprehensively covering key topics in virology
