Ezio Ricca (University of Naples Federico II, Italy)
Speaker: Ezio Ricca (University of Cambridge, United Kingdom)
Talk: Microbiology and Biotechnological Applications of Spore Formers
Time: Friday, 3rd July 2015, 10:00
Venue: Biotechnology Summer School 2015, Kadyny Folwark Hotel&SPA
Category: Invited lectures during Biotechnology Summer School
Ezio Ricca, biographical note
Ezio Ricca is a professor of Microbiology of the Federico II University of Naples (Italy). As a student of the University of Naples, he worked for his Thesis at the International Institute of Genetic and Biophysics (IIGB) of Naples under the supervision of Prof. M. De Felice on the molecular characterization of Escherichia coli mutants altered in the biosynthesis of branched-chains amino acids. After that Ezio spent more than two years as a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Prof. J.M. Calvo at the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology of the Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (US). At Cornell Ezio worked on the transcriptional regulation of the ilvIH operon of Escherichia coli and Salmonella typhimurium identifying and characterizing Lrp, a global regulator of metabolism in enterobacteria. From 1990 Ezio became interested in gram-positive spore forming bacteria and spent two years in the laboratory of Prof. R. Losick at the Department of Cellular and Developmental Biology of the Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (US). At Harvard Ezio worked on the activation of sigmaK, a sporulation-specific sigma factor of the RNA polymerase, on the characterization of the sporulation gene spoVM and on the identification of CotG, an abundant component of the spore surface. Since Ezio return to Italy at the Federico II University of Naples, his research interests have been focused on the study of the bacterial spore surface and on the use of spores as a biotechnological tool. In particular, Ezio developed the use of the spore as a mucosal delivery system and as a probiotic agent. More recently, Ezio became also interested in the study of the interactions between commensal bacteria and intestinal cells and in the effects of bacteria and bacterial molecules on the composition of the gut microbiota. Since 2003 Ezio Ricca is in the Editorial board of FEMS Microbiol Lett, and is in the Organizing Committee of the “European Spores Conference” (Bratislava, Slovakia, 2004 and 2006; Napoli, Italy, 2008; Cortona, Italy, 2010; Egham, UK, 2012 and 2014).