Intro
"Steva Travaggio" means "Stefano Work" in the Dialetto Genovese spoken in Genova (Italy) where I was born and grew up! This is my personal work web page, for the moments it contains the essentials but I hope to add more pages in the future. Enjoy the visit...
A short presentation
I am working as a Research Scientist at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (CR2, INRA), i.e. the French National Institute for Agricultural Research.
I joined the UMR203 Biologie Fonctionnelle Insectes et Interactions (UMR203 BF2I) in November 2007. Our laboratory is at the Institut National des Sciences Appliquée de Lyon and part of the Université de Lyon. At present I am involved in the application and development of genomics approaches to study the symbiosis between the pea aphid (Acyrthosiphon pisum) and its symbiont bacteria (Buchnera Aphidicola). The sequencing project of the aphid genome is under way and the genome of Buchnera is already available: this creates an excellent opportunity to use both my training in biology and my genomics expertise to develop novel approaches to symbiosis biology research.
Present research interest
At the present our main research effort is contributing to the aphid genome annotation and you can follow the annotation progress on the project wiki. Francis Collins recently said, referring to the Human Genome research, “We are in the Genome Era - we have mapped and identified most of the genes and we now have to understand their function(s)”. Indeed, the availability of genomic sequences has revolutionized biology with the generation of new experimental tools and for the aphids we are just in the early beginning of the genomics era.
"One of the most intriguing of the many remaining issues regarding the functional genomics of symbiosis is the question of how host gene products interact with symbionts to compensate for gene loss and to integrate symbiont functions into the mutualistic system" (Moran & Degnan, Mol Ecol. 2006). Using a combination of in silico and in vivo/in vitro experimental genomics approaches I am interested in exploring the complex gene networks underlying symbiosis. To me, high-throughput based genomics research is not only a technical innovation, but the spark of an intellectual revolution in modern biology research.
