Biografia

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Dr. Antonella Paladino is a Senior Researcher at IBB-CNR. Her research sits at the interface of computational structural biology, bioinformatics, and biophysics, focusing on how biomolecular structure and conformational dynamics govern biological function and disease mechanisms. Dr. Paladino earned her PhD in Computational Biology through a joint framework between the University of Campania 'Luigi Vanvitelli' and the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB) in Barcelona, Spain, under Prof. Modesto Orozco. Prior to her current position, she held research appointments at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Biogem Scarl, the University of Sannio, and ICRM-CNR in Milan, with Prof. Giorgio Colombo. Her expertise spans molecular modeling, atomistic molecular dynamics simulations, AI-driven computational tools, and structure-based drug discovery. Her studies focus on gaining mechanistic insights into the structure, dynamics, interactions, and function of key biomolecular complexes driving the onset of major human pathologies, including kinases, chaperones, and Argonaute proteins, to rationally guide the discovery of targeted therapeutic strategies.

Interessi di ricerca

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Conformational Dynamics & Allostery: large-scale conformational changes and allosteric mechanisms in complex biomolecules.
Molecular Recognition & Function: structure-function relationships, gene regulation mechanisms, and recognition networks (protein-protein, protein-ligand, protein-RNA).
Drug & Molecular Design: structure- and dynamics-based drug design, and rational protein and peptide engineering.
Biomolecular Thermodynamics: molecular stability, structural transitions, and chemical denaturation.

Pubblicazioni scelte

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- Paladino A., Catte A., Franco J., Moroni E., Rinaldi S., "Conformational Dynamics of hAgo2 Silencing: Decoding Functional Divergence Across Human Argonaute Paralogs” J Chem Inf Model 2025 Sep 22;65(18):9528-9540.
- Paladino A., Balasco N., Graziano G., Vitagliano L. "A Protein Data Bank survey of multimodal binding of thiocyanate to proteins: Evidence for thiocyanate promiscuity." Int J of Biol Macromol – 2022 May 31:208:29-36.
-Paladino A., Woodford M.R., Backe S.J., Sager R.A., Kancherla P., Daneshvar M.A., Chen V.Z., Ahanin E.F., Prodromou C., Bergamaschi G., Strada A., Cretich M., Gori A., Veronesi M., Bandiera T., Vanna R., Bratslavsky G., Serapian S.A., Mollapour M., Colombo G. "Chemical Perturbation of Oncogenic Protein Folding: from the Prediction of Locally Unstable Structures to the Design of Disruptors of Hsp90–Client Interactions." Chemistry – 2020 Aug;26(43):9459-9465.
-Paladino A., Marchetti F., Ponzoni L., Colombo G. “The interplay between stability and palsticity determines mutation profiles and chaperone dependence in protein kinases” – J. Chem. Theory Comput., 2018 Feb, 14(2):1059-1070
- Kowalczyk L., Ratera M., Paladino A., Bartoccioni P., Errasti E., Valencia E., Portella G., Bial S., Zorzano A., Fita I., Orozco M., Carpena X., Vázquez-Ibar J.L., Palacín M. “Molecular basis of substrate-induced permeation by an amino acid Antiporter” Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 Mar 8;108(10):3935-40.

Progetti in evidenza

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PRIN 2022 - Atomic-level description of the modulation of protein structure and stability by the ions of the Hofmeister series (research area PE4 - project id 2022FTHZZ7)

PRACE ICEI_2021- Exploring the dynamics of RNA-silencing by Argonautes (project No. 800858)