The obtained results are highly relevant for the Dosage Compensation and Epigenetics fields, providing novel and unexpected insights into the regulation of escape from XCI. The project revealed that genes escaping XCI constitutively (i.e. in all tissues and all individuals) or facultatively (i.e. in a tissue- and/or individual-specific manner) are characterized by different epigenetic features. Such features, including 3D topology, are likely to underlie different strategies set-up by different X-linked genes to resist XCI during early development and/or in different context throughout the lifespan of female mammals. Furthermore, the results obtained in this project led to novel exciting questions that the Fellow is ready to explore in her own line of research as a fully independent scientist.
During the MSCA, the Fellow reinforced her expertise in molecular biology and acquired a multitude of new skills, including computational skills for the bioinformatic analysis of (epi)genomic data. The Fellow learned how to plan and monitor an interdisciplinary project, she supervised Master and PhD students, followed a tailored-design mentoring and coaching program for the next generation of leaders, and effectively transferred her knowledge by sharing the protocols and tools that she developed with younger students and peers.
The results stemming from this project were broadly disseminated within and outside EMBL, at several international conferences and workshops. Disseminating her finding significantly enhanced the Fellow’s network and allowed her to reinforce critical knowledge exchange by establishing new collaborations with scientists spread across Europe, from Germany to Italy, Sweden, France, and Spain. The Fellow reached a broad audience of researchers within the Molecular Biology, Epigenetics, and Dosage Compensation fields by writing two comprehensive reviews focusing on X-inactivation and the interplay between genome topology and function. She also wrote one technical manuscript describing an effective method to explore the 3D organization of the genome at very high resolution, and she is currently preparing the manuscript describing her main research results.
The Fellow also took part into several outreach activities. As project manager for the Italian community in Heidelberg, she reinforced her collaboration with Native Scientist, a non-profit organization that promotes cultural and linguistic diversity in STEM. The Fellow established a network of >30 scientists and organized two workshops in primary schools of the Heidelberg area. She also contributed to AIRI-CLIP, an initiative promoted by the Italian Association of Researchers that was launched during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide summaries of relevant scientific publications translated in Italian to inform the general public. She contributed to the “EMBL-Nigeria pen pals project”, a program that aims to inspire the next generation of scientists, and also shared her results and experiences as a immigrant scientist in the frame of the ‘EMBL School Ambassador’ program. Finally, the Fellow participate to the online talk series “Women in Science” organized by the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst – DAAD), where she answered questions of young students looking for opportunities to leave their countries to pursue their Master and/or PhD studies abroad.
