Rita Casadio

Rita Casadio has a degree in physics, and after working in laboratories of biophysics in USA and Germany she was enrolled by the University of Bologna, Italy, in 1987 as an Assistant Professor of biophysics, and in 2001 as a Full Professor of biochemistry/bioinformatics at the Faculty of Physical Mathematical and Natural Sciences. She is the founder and the group leader of the Biocomputing Group, a research team working since a decade in developing tools for problem solving in computational biology. One major field of research is the application of machine learning methods to the prediction of different structural and functional features of proteins, including membrane proteins. Several applications are available as web servers for sequence analysis and structure prediction, proteome annotations, and structural bioinformatics (www.biocomp.unibo.it). The results of these works have been selected several times for presentation at the International Forum of Bioinformatics “Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology” (ISMB). A method for the prediction of protein contact maps was scored as the best of its category in CASP nos. 4 and 5 (Asimolar, California, 2000 and 2002 ). A method for predicting the topography of outer membrane proteins based on HMM and sequence profile was acknowledged with the SGI best award at ISMB02 (Edmonton, Canada, 2002). RC with the Biocomputing Unit is active in organizing international schools on bioinformatics. She cochaired WABI 2005, and serves at the Editorial Board of BMC Bioinformatics and BioData Mining. Presently, she is the President of the Bologna International Master in Bioinformatics. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of INBB, an Italian Interuniversity Consortium, acting as a representative of the Italian Minister of MIUR; the International Society of Computational Biology (ISCB); the Italian Society of Bioinformatics; and of the National CNR-Life Science Department (under the Bioinformatics project).

Biography Updated on 19 March 2008

Personal Home Page

http://lipid.biocomp.unibo.it/casadio/

Articles in Scholarly Journals [Incomplete List]

  1. Terlipressin infusion induces ischemia of breast skin in a cirrothic patient with hepatorenal syndrome
    Digestive and Liver Disease, vol. 40, no. 4, pp. 304–305, 2008
  2. Use of estimated evolutionary strength at the codon level improves the prediction of disease-related protein mutations in humans
    Human Mutation, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 198–204, 2007
  3. Cloning, functional identification and structural modelling of Vitis vinifera S-adenosylmethionine decarboxylase
    Journal of Plant Physiology, vol. 164, no. 9, pp. 1208–1219, 2007
  4. Non-adiabatic quantum effects from a Standard Model time-dependent Higgs vev
    Nuclear Physics B, vol. 783, no. 1-2, pp. 1–30, 2007
  5. Robust Determinants of Thermostability Highlighted by a Codon Frequency Index Capable of Discriminating Thermophilic from Mesophilic Genomes
    Journal of Proteome Research, vol. 6, no. 7, pp. 2502–2508, 2007
  6. Molecular mechanism of thioredoxin regulation in photosynthetic A2B2-glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 104, no. 26, pp. 11109–11114, 2007
  7. The implications of alternative splicing in the ENCODE protein complement
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 104, no. 13, pp. 5495–5500, 2007
  8. eSLDB: eukaryotic subcellular localization database
    Nucleic Acids Research, vol. 35, no. Database, pp. D208–D212, 2007
  9. Boundaries and the Casimir effect in noncommutative space-time
    Physical Review D, vol. 76, no. 2, 2007
  10. Guest Editor's Introduction to the Special Section on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (WABI) -- Part 2
    IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 3–3, 2007
  11. Modern Physics Letters A, vol. 22, no. 5, p. 339, 2007
  12. New Escherichia coli outer membrane proteins identified through prediction and experimental verification
    Protein Science, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 884–889, 2006
  13. Moving mirrors and black hole evaporation in noncommutative space-times
    Physical Review D, vol. 73, no. 4, 2006
  14. Guest Editor's Introduction to the Special Issue on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics -- Part 1
    IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 321–322, 2006
  15. BaCelLo: a balanced subcellular localization predictor
    Bioinformatics, vol. 22, no. 14, pp. e408–e416, 2006
  16. Predicting the insurgence of human genetic diseases associated to single point protein mutations with support vector machines and evolutionary information
    Bioinformatics, vol. 22, no. 22, pp. 2729–2734, 2006
  17. K-Fold: a tool for the prediction of the protein folding kinetic order and rate
    Bioinformatics, vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 385–386, 2006
  18. PONGO: a web server for multiple predictions of all-alpha transmembrane proteins
    Nucleic Acids Research, vol. 34, no. Web Server, pp. W169–W172, 2006
  19. The Ectodomain of Herpes Simplex Virus Glycoprotein H Contains a Membrane  -Helix with Attributes of an Internal Fusion Peptide, Positionally Conserved in the Herpesviridae Family
    Journal of Virology, vol. 81, no. 5, pp. 2539–2539, 2006
  20. Classical dynamics and stability of collapsing thick shells of matter
    Classical and Quantum Gravity, vol. 23, no. 5, pp. 1493–1506, 2006
  21. The method of comparison equations for cosmological perturbations
    Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, vol. 2006, no. 04, pp. 011–011, 2006
  22. Gravitational collapse and evolution of holographic black holes
    Journal of Physics: Conference Series, vol. 33, pp. 434–439, 2006
  23. The WWWH of remote homolog detection: The state of the art
    Briefings in Bioinformatics, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 78–87, 2006
  24. Hierarchical Mechanochemical Switches in Angiostatin
    ChemBioChem, vol. 7, no. 11, pp. 1774–1782, 2006
  25. Pressure and temperature as tools for investigating the role of individual non-covalent interactions in enzymatic reactionsSulfolobus solfataricus carboxypeptidase as a model enzyme
    Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) - Proteins & Proteomics, 2006
  26. Preprotein Translocase of the Outer Mitochondrial Membrane: Reconstituted Tom40 Forms a Characteristic TOM Pore
    Journal of Molecular Biology, 2005
  27. Substrate-induced conformational changes of the mitochondrial oxoglutarate carrier: a spectroscopic and molecular modelling study
    Molecular Membrane Biology, vol. 22, no. 5, pp. 443–452, 2005
  28. The Ectodomain of Herpes Simplex Virus Glycoprotein H Contains a Membrane  -Helix with Attributes of an Internal Fusion Peptide, Positionally Conserved in the Herpesviridae Family
    Journal of Virology, vol. 79, no. 5, pp. 2931–2940, 2005
  29. Predicting protein stability changes from sequences using support vector machines
    Bioinformatics, vol. 21, no. suppl_2, pp. ii54–ii58, 2005
  30. I-Mutant2.0: predicting stability changes upon mutation from the protein sequence or structure
    Nucleic Acids Research, vol. 33, no. Web Server, pp. W306–W310, 2005
  31. TRAMPLE: the transmembrane protein labelling environment
    Nucleic Acids Research, vol. 33, no. Web Server, pp. W198–W201, 2005
  32. Second order brane cosmology with radion stabilization
    Physical Review D, vol. 72, no. 2, 2005
  33. Protein annotation as term categorization in the gene ontology using word proximity networks
    BMC Bioinformatics, vol. 6, no. Suppl 1, p. S20, 2005
  34. Overview of BITS2005, the Second Annual Meeting of the Italian Bioinformatics Society
    BMC Bioinformatics, vol. 6, no. Suppl 4, p. S1, 2005
  35. A new decoding algorithm for hidden Markov models improves the prediction of the topology of all-beta membrane proteins
    BMC Bioinformatics, vol. 6, no. Suppl 4, p. S12, 2005
  36. Histone deacetylase 1: a target of 9-hydroxystearic acid in the inhibition of cell growth in human colon cancer
    The Journal of Lipid Research, vol. 46, no. 8, pp. 1596–1603, 2005
  37. ConSeq: the identification of functionally and structurally important residues in protein sequences
    Bioinformatics, vol. 20, no. 8, pp. 1322–1324, 2004
  38. A neural-network-based method for predicting protein stability changes upon single point mutations
    Bioinformatics, vol. 20, no. suppl_1, pp. i63–i68, 2004
  39. Functional Characterization of a Second Porin Isoform in Drosophila melanogaster: DMPORIN2 FORMS VOLTAGE-INDEPENDENT CATION-SELECTIVE PORES
    Journal of Biological Chemistry, vol. 279, no. 24, pp. 25364–25373, 2004
  40. Biotechnology Progress, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 968–974, 2004
  41. Isothermal and non-isothermal bioreactors in the detoxification of waste waters polluted by aromatic compounds by means of immobilised laccase from Rhus vernicifera
    Journal of Molecular Catalysis B: Enzymatic, vol. 27, no. 4-6, pp. 191–206, 2004
  42. A novel RGDS-analog inhibits angiogenesis in vitro and in vivo
    Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, vol. 321, no. 4, pp. 809–814, 2004
  43. Prediction of disulfide-bonded cysteines in proteomes with a hidden neural network
    PROTEOMICS, vol. 4, no. 6, pp. 1665–1671, 2004
  44. The prediction of membrane protein structure and genome structural annotation
    Comparative and Functional Genomics, vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 406–409, 2003
  45. The 4th Bologna Winter School: hot topics in structural genomics
    Comparative and Functional Genomics, vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 394–396, 2003
  46. A neural network approach to evaluate fold recognition results
    Proteins: Structure, Function, and Genetics, vol. 50, no. 4, pp. 600–608, 2003
  47. A Shannon entropy-based filter detects high- quality profile-profile alignments in searches for remote homologues
    Proteins: Structure, Function, and Bioinformatics, vol. 54, no. 2, pp. 351–360, 2003
  48. MaxSubSeq: an algorithm for segment-length optimization. The case study of the transmembrane spanning segments
    Bioinformatics, vol. 19, no. 4, pp. 500–505, 2003
  49. An ENSEMBLE machine learning approach for the prediction of all-alpha membrane proteins
    Bioinformatics, vol. 19, no. 90001, pp. 205i–211, 2003
  50. SPEPlip: the detection of signal peptide and lipoprotein cleavage sites
    Bioinformatics, vol. 19, no. 18, pp. 2498–2499, 2003
  51. In silico prediction of the structure of membrane proteins: Is it feasible?
    Briefings in Bioinformatics, vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 341–348, 2003
  52. Fishing new proteins in the twilight zone of genomes: The test case of outer membrane proteins in Escherichia coli K12, Escherichia coli O157:H7, and other Gram-negative bacteria
    Protein Science, vol. 12, no. 6, pp. 1158–1168, 2003
  53. Prediction of the disulfide-bonding state of cysteines in proteins at 88% accuracy
    Protein Science, vol. 11, no. 11, pp. 2735–2739, 2002
  54. Substitution in the Murine Nectin1 Receptor of a Single Conserved Amino Acid at a Position Distal from the Herpes Simplex Virus gD Binding Site Confers High-Affinity Binding to gD
    Journal of Virology, vol. 76, no. 11, pp. 5463–5471, 2002
  55. Protein structure prediction and biomolecular recognition: from protein sequence to peptidomimetic design with the human β 3 integrin
    SAR and QSAR in Environmental Research, vol. 13, no. 3-4, pp. 473–486, 2002
  56. A 3D model of the voltage-dependent anion channel (VDAC)
    FEBS Letters, vol. 520, no. 1-3, pp. 1–7, 2002
  57. Transglutaminases: Nature’s biological glues
    Biochemical Journal, vol. 368, no. 2, p. 377, 2002
  58. Prediction of protein-protein interaction sites in heterocomplexes with neural networks
    European Journal of Biochemistry, vol. 269, no. 5, pp. 1356–1361, 2002
  59. Progress in predicting inter-residue contacts of proteins with neural networks and correlated mutations
    Proteins: Structure, Function, and Genetics, vol. 45, no. S5, pp. 157–162, 2002
  60. Prediction of coordination number and relative solvent accessibility in proteins
    Proteins: Structure, Function, and Genetics, vol. 47, no. 2, pp. 142–153, 2002
  61. Effect of molecular confinement on internal enzyme dynamics: Frequency domain fluorometry and molecular dynamics simulation studies
    Biopolymers, vol. 67, no. 2, pp. 85–95, 2002
  62. Characterisation of immunodominant protein encoded by the F1L gene of orf virus strains isolated in Italy
    Archives of Virology, vol. 147, no. 10, pp. 1989–1995, 2002
  63. Structure-based computational study of the catalytic and inhibition mechanisms of urease
    Journal of Biological Inorganic Chemistry, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 300–314, 2001
  64. Urease immobilisation on chemically grafted nylon membranes Part 1: Isothermal characterisation
    Journal of Molecular Catalysis B: Enzymatic, vol. 14, no. 1-3, pp. 15–29, 2001
  65. Influence of the immobilization process on the activity of ß-galactosidase bound to Nylon membranes grafted with glycidyl methacrylate Part 1. Isothermal behavior
    Journal of Molecular Catalysis B: Enzymatic, vol. 16, no. 3-4, pp. 175–189, 2001
  66. Model of interaction of the IL-1 receptor accessory protein IL-1RAcP with the IL-1ß/IL-1RI complex
    FEBS Letters, vol. 499, no. 1-2, pp. 65–68, 2001
  67. Prediction of disulfide connectivity in proteins
    Bioinformatics, vol. 17, no. 10, pp. 957–964, 2001
  68. RCNPRED: prediction of the residue co-ordination numbers in proteins
    Bioinformatics, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 202–204, 2001
  69. Prediction of the transmembrane regions of beta-barrel membrane proteins with a neural network-based predictor
    Protein Science, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 779–787, 2001
  70. Discrete symmetries and localization in a brane-world
    Physical Review D, vol. 64, no. 2, 2001
  71. Gravitational collapse of a radiating shell
    Physical Review D, vol. 64, no. 10, 2001
  72. Nonminimally coupled scalar fields in homogeneous universes
    Physical Review D, vol. 61, no. 8, 2000
  73. Three dimensional gravity from ISO(2,1) coset models
    Physical Review D, vol. 62, no. 10, 2000
  74. Neural Networks Predict Protein Folding and Structure: Artificial Intelligence Faces Biomolecular Complexity
    SAR and QSAR in Environmental Research, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 149–182, 2000
  75. The effect of tryptophanyl substitution on folding and structure of myoglobin
    European Journal of Biochemistry, vol. 267, no. 13, pp. 3937–3945, 2000
  76. Electromagnetic contributions to lepton g-2 in a thick brane-world
    Physics Letters B, vol. 495, no. 3-4, pp. 378–383, 2000
  77. Predictions of protein segments with the same aminoacid sequence and different secondary structure: A benchmark for predictive methods
    Proteins: Structure, Function, and Genetics, vol. 41, no. 4, pp. 535–544, 2000
  78. Role of evolutionary information in predicting the disulfide-bonding state of cysteine in proteins
    Proteins: Structure, Function, and Genetics, vol. 36, no. 3, pp. 340–346, 1999
  79. Neural networks to study invariant features of protein folding
    Theoretical Chemistry Accounts: Theory, Computation, and Modeling (Theoretica Chimica Acta), vol. 101, no. 1-3, pp. 21–26, 1999
  80. The structural basis for the regulation of tissue transglutaminase by calcium ions
    European Journal of Biochemistry, vol. 262, no. 3, pp. 672–679, 1999
  81. Energy absorption by the dilaton waves around a rotating black hole in a binary system
    Physical Review D, vol. 60, no. 10, 1999
  82. Microfield dynamics of black holes
    Physical Review D, vol. 58, no. 4, 1998
  83. Perturbations in the Kerr-Newman dilatonic black hole background: Maxwell waves, the dilaton background, and gravitational lensing
    Physical Review D, vol. 58, no. 4, 1998
  84. Hamiltonian formalism for the Oppenheimer-Snyder model
    Physical Review D, vol. 58, no. 6, 1998
  85. Erratum to: 'Functional genetic tests of DNA mismatch repair protein activity in Saccharomyces cerevisiae' [Gene 213 (1998) 159–167]
    Gene, vol. 221, no. 1, p. 169, 1998
  86. A high diffusion coefficient for coenzyme Q10 might be related to a folded structure
    FEBS Letters, vol. 426, no. 1, pp. 77–80, 1998
  87. An entropy criterion to detect minimally frustrated intermediates in native proteins
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 95, no. 16, pp. 9290–9294, 1998
  88. Conformational Changes of Neuromedin B and Delta Sleep-Inducing Peptide Induced by Their Interaction with Lipid Membranes as Revealed by Spectroscopic Techniques and Molecular Dynamics Simulation,
    Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics, vol. 349, no. 2, pp. 225–235, 1998
  89. The prediction of protein secondary structure with a Cascade Correlation Learning Architecture of neural networks
    Neural Computing & Applications, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 57–62, 1997
  90. CaATP inhibition of the MgATP-dependent proton pump (H + -ATPase) in bacterial photosynthetic membranes with a mechanism of alternative substrate inhibition
    Journal of Biological Inorganic Chemistry, vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 284–291, 1996
  91. DCCD-sensitive proton permeability of bacterial photosynthetic membranes. Cross-reconstitution studies with purified bovine heart Fo subunits
    Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) - Bioenergetics, vol. 1276, no. 1, pp. 80–86, 1996
  92. An ab initio study of the dioxygen binding site of hemocyanin: A comparison between CASSCF, CASPT2, and DFT approaches
    International Journal of Quantum Chemistry, vol. 58, no. 1, pp. 109–119, 1996
  93. Inorganic Chemistry, vol. 35, no. 18, pp. 5207–5212, 1996
  94. The Effect of Membranes on the Conformation of Neuromedin C
    Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, vol. 214, no. 2, pp. 663–668, 1995
  95. Characterization of 9-aminoacridine interaction with chromatophore membranes and modelling of the probe response to artificially induced transmembrane ?pH values
    Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) - Biomembranes, vol. 1237, no. 1, pp. 23–30, 1995
  96. A mathematical model relating diffusion of hydrophobic ions to their adsorption on biological membranes as detected with a microdialyzer
    Journal of Biological Physics, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 211–222, 1994
  97. Kinetic characterization of the ATP-dependent proton pump in bacterial photosynthetic membranes: a study with the fluorescent probe 9-amino-6-chloro-2-methoxyacridine
    Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) - Bioenergetics, vol. 1143, no. 2, pp. 215–222, 1993
  98. Evaluation of the electrical capacitance in biological membranes at different phospholipid to protein ratios
    European Biophysics Journal, vol. 16, no. 4, 1988
  99. Calibration of the response of 9-amino acridine fluorescence to transmembrane pH differences in bacterial chromatophores
    Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics, vol. 238, no. 1, pp. 219–228, 1985
  100. $$\Delta \tilde \mu _{{\rm H}^ + } $$ determination in phospholipid vesicles reconstituted with aggregated and monomeric bacteriorhodopsindetermination in phospholipid vesicles reconstituted with aggregated and monomeric bacteriorhodopsin
    Biophysics of Structure and Mechanism, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 291–291, 1981
  101. Biochemistry, vol. 19, no. 14, pp. 3374–3381, 1980
  102. Limited cooperativity in the coupling between electron flow and photosynthetic ATP synthesis A comparative study in chromatophores phosphorylating at very different rates
    FEBS Letters, vol. 87, no. 2, pp. 323–328, 1978
  103. The behavior of 9-aminoacridine as an indicator of transmembrane pH difference in liposomes of natural bacterial phospholipids
    Journal of Bioenergetics and Biomembranes, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 17–29, 1977
  104. Thermodynamics and Kinetics of Photophosphorylation in Bacterial Chromatophores and Their Relation with the Transmembrane Electrochemical Potential Difference of Protons
    European Journal of Biochemistry, vol. 78, no. 2, pp. 389–402, 1977
  105. On the Determination of the Transmembrane pH Difference in Bacterial Chromatophores using 9-Aminoacridine
    European Journal of Biochemistry, vol. 47, no. 1, pp. 121–128, 1974
  106. Electrochemical proton gradient and phosphate potential in bacterial chromatophores
    FEBS Letters, vol. 49, no. 2, pp. 203–207, 1974