Nature's gifts have been used by mankind since ancient times, from the Amazon poisons used by natives up to more modern phytochemical based drugs. Terrestrial plants have always represented a good source for natural bioactive compounds discovery, e.g. phenolic secondary metabolites. Same chemical entities present in species coming from distant kingdoms often show a wider variety of biological activities, also thanks to the ability to interact and "communicate" with different biological systems. An example is represented by iridoids, a central biochemical bridge between plant and animal kingdom. These compounds, synthesized both in plants and insects, are a key tool for intra-species and inter-kingdom communication and their functions and biological activities are strongly connected. Another biochemical bridging point between two distant worlds such as terrestrial and marine organisms is represented by the class of sulfur-containing compounds. My preliminary ground-breaking results have highlighted for the first time the presence of the same organic sulfur metabolites in marine organisms and in humans.
This project is aimed to identify and characterize novel key common intermediates from the metabolism of evolutionally distant living beings, with a particular focus on sulfur metabolome. Conserved bridging points in the chemical evolution of "Life" will be investigated in ancestral marine and terrestrial organisms, plants and animals. For this purpose a metabolomics-based platform with advanced analytical methods, i.e. chromatographic, spectroscopic and spectrometric methods, will be set up. Different biological systems will be used for the evaluation of the role of converging common metabolites and sulfur-containing compounds in physiological and pathological conditions. Sulfur metabolism will be furthermore investigated in relation to nitrogen and carbon in order to provide a more complete scenario and shed light on the still unclear sulfur biochemical cycle
My research at Sapienza University of Rome has led to high impact published results. It was focused on organic natural compounds
and on the modulation of oxidative stress in biological and pathological processes such as inflammation and neurodegeneration. During this period we investigated the stability and the antiviral activity of the natural antioxidant Resveratrol developing a novel bioactive formulation with a natural biopolymer that was patented by my former research group from Sapienza University of Rome
(EP2674155B1). During this last year the research field on natural products led me to identify and determine an interesting class of
common metabolites belonging to extremely distant species such as terrestrial and marine organisms, the class of sulfur-containing
compounds. These chemical "meeting points" aroused my curiosity on the origin of life and on the role of marine ancestral sulfurous
compounds in higher organisms due to their evolutionary conservation.
The aim of this project will be to elucidate the structure of novel natural active products such as sulfur-containing compounds and to
study their biosynthetic pathways in distant species.
The scientific research on the chemical evolution and the biochemistry of organic sulfur is an essential field of research that can be
defined still "virgin" from a scientific point of view with respect to the knowledge acquired on the biochemistry of other chemical
elements of "life" such as carbon, oxygen and nitrogen. In the current scientific context of biochemistry it is extremely important to
deepen and better understand the role of organic sulfur in the metabolism of different species given the emerging role that this element covers in primary and fundamental functions of living beings.
This grant will help me to combine the two research interests described above to advance a new fertile research strategy on the
chemical evolution of metabolism and sulfur biochemical cycle.