Senior Researcher
CNR, Istituto Per La Protezione Sostenibile Delle Piante
Italy
In 1994 Dr. Leonetti obtained the Degree in Biological Sciences, University of Bari, 110/110 cum Laude and in 2000
the Specialization Degree in Biochemistry and Clinical Chemistry, University of Bari, 50/50 cum Laude. She was
studying from biochemical and molecular point of view phenomenon of mithocondrial and nuclear mechanisms of
oxidative stress. In 2000 she was also in the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany for one
year working on DHEA hormone and their effect on cellular aging mechanisms. Since 2001, Dr. Leonetti is a researcher
at the Italian National Research Council (CNR) in the Departement of Biology, Agricultural and Food Science (DisBA) at
the Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection (IPSP). In 2024 Dr. leonetti became Senior researcher.
From 2006 to 2008 she was involved in the “Bioinformatic consortium for the manual annotation of the genome of
Meloidogyne incognita” and participated to the Training Course “Tools for the expert manual annotation of M.
incognita genome” at INRA Sophia Antipolis, France. The output were published on Nature Biotechnology journal
“Genome sequence of the metazoan plant-parasitic nematode Meloidogyne incognita” and the studies on plant-
phytoparasitic nematode interactions were started.
She has collaborations and projects founded by Italian (Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Direzione Generale per la
Cooperazione allo sviluppo, Programma Sviluppo Rurale FEASR Reg. CE), and foreign university and research centers
(Poland, Germany, Egypt, Brasil).
Many publications were done working on biocontrol strategies in the sustainable management of main
phytonematode pests with for example either fungi or SAR inductors, on systems biology with genome-wide
approaches to unveil the molecular players involved in the pre-germinative metabolism of seeds, on epigenetic trait in
polyploidization mechanism in crops