Biophysical Society Bulletin | January 2020

Biophysicist in Profile

Anna Moroni Areas of Research Structure-functional relationship in potassium channels

Institution University of Milan

At-a-Glance

Italian biophysicist Anna Moroni , professor of plant physiology at the University of Milan, hoped as a child that she would be an artist when she grew up, given her passion for acting and painting. After dipping a toe into the world of research, however, she knew that science was the path she should pursue. “I just found that people in science were much nicer, and honestly, I keep on think- ing it,” she says. “A creative mind and uncorrupted scientific approach are what I admire most in many colleagues.”

Anna Moroni

Anna Moroni grew up in a family of lawyers, with several extended family members who were researchers in medicine and chemistry. She studied ancient Latin and Greek, and had a passion for acting and painting, but Moroni found herself following her interest in science when it came to her higher education and career. She was encouraged by the fact that the scientific community was so welcoming. “From the begin- ning I just found that people in science were much nicer, and honestly, I keep on thinking it,” she shares. “Driven by their pure interest in knowing how things work — not in search of money —with a clear view of the fact that humans are just part of the animal kingdom, scientists appeared to me just right.” She pursued a master’s degree in agronomy, the science of soil management and crop production, at the University of Milan. There she worked with Erasmo Marrè and Jack Dainty , who introduced her to biophysics — both worked on mem- brane transport in plants. In addition to learning the subject matter from both men, Moroni developed deep connections with them. “Marrè was what we call in Italy a Renaissance man, highly educated in several fields, from science to philos- ophy, music, and so on. And he was a flamboyant character too, that kind of person that you can spend the entire evening telling anecdotes about,” she says. “Dainty has been a pioneer in in the biophysics of water transport in plants and his char- acter and his scientific approach inspired me a lot. He was the best human being I ever met. Moving from a deprived coal mining background in Yorkshire to the exclusive Cambridge environment, he remained throughout his life a socialist. I had the privilege to become one of his closest friends and to host him for long periods in my lab after his retirement. We pub- lished a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper together when he was more than 80.” Following the completion of her master’s degree, she earned her PhD in cellular and molecular biology at the University of Milan. She studied abroad for six months at the University of Toronto in Eduardo Blumwald’s lab, working on membrane

transport, and for a year in Alberto Mancinelli’s lab at Colum- bia University, studying phytochrome photoconversion. She also took a course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory taught by Gail Robertson and Peter Ruben , which was a turning point for her. “The striking thing about that course for someone like me coming from Italy, was the discovery that teachers encouraged students to try out their ideas by performing experiments,” she shares. “It might sound odd, but in my environment students were not asked — nor allowed — to suggest experiments, which were at that time decided by se- nior people only.” After her PhD, she worked in a postdoctoral position at the University of Milan, where she cloned human HCN2 channels and discovered viral potassium channels. Moroni is now a professor of plant physiology at the Univer- sity of Milan, where she also teaches membrane biophysics. Her current projects are understanding structural-function- al correlates in HCN channels and protein engineering for creating synthetic channels with new functional features, such as light- or temperature-gated channels. “We combine structural studies — nowadays cryo-EM— and functional assays (patch clamp primarily), in order to follow dynamic changes during channel activity. With this approach we have identified ways to interfere with channel activity by means of small molecule drugs or interacting peptides,” she explains, “and we could explain the effect of several pathological mu- tations found in patients. In turn, we use the deep knowledge on mechanisms of gating to engineer synthetic ion channels. For instance, we have created a K+ channel that is activated by light.” The biggest challenge of her career thus far has been to get a permanent position in academia in spite of her interdisciplin- ary focus. “In Italy, the borders between scientific disciplines are traditionally kept tight and biophysics is not quite open to biologists. So for me, having a background in plant physiolo- gy and working in mammalian ion channels, it has not been easy,” she says. “And I see that for my young collaborators things are not yet easier. I think I was lucky and persistent;

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