Stefania Nordio, PhD student studying Zinc Biology
I studied my bachelor degree in Milano Bicocca university, in the faculty of Biology. In 2019 I moved to Israel and joined professor Libersat's laboratory for my MSc in Ben Gurion university of the Negev. In my master, my research focused on the importance of dopamine receptors in insects' model. Then after, in 2022, I started my PhD program in professor Hershfinkel's laboratory in the Physiology and Cell Biology department. Currently, my main goal is to investigate the zinc homeostasis in the dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN), by studying the zinc transporters expressed in this area of the brain.
I used immunofluorescence to study the expression of zinc transporters in the DCN, and found ZIP3 expressed on the cartwheel postsynaptic cells:
Using live cell imaging of the DCN, I show that silencing of the transporter reduces the zinc influx into these cells:
