Silvia Paracchini

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This so ...

is a geneticist who researches the contribution of genetic variation to neurodevelopmental traits such as

dyslexia Dyslexia, also known until the 1960s as word blindness, is a disorder characterized by reading below the expected level for one's age. Different people are affected to different degrees. Problems may include difficulties in spelling words, r ...

and human

handedness In human biology, handedness is an individual's preferential use of one hand, known as the dominant hand, due to it being stronger, faster or more dextrous. The other hand, comparatively often the weaker, less dextrous or simply less subjec ...

Education

As an undergraduate, Paracchini studied

Biological Sciences Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary ...

at the

University of Pavia The University of Pavia ( it, Università degli Studi di Pavia, UNIPV or ''Università di Pavia''; la, Alma Ticinensis Universitas) is a university located in Pavia, Lombardy, Italy. There was evidence of teaching as early as 1361, making it on ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

. During this time she undertook an

ERASMUS Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (; ; English: Erasmus of Rotterdam or Erasmus;''Erasmus'' was his baptismal name, given after St. Erasmus of Formiae. ''Desiderius'' was an adopted additional name, which he used from 1496. The ''Roterodamus'' w ...

scholarship project at the

Technical University of Denmark The Technical University of Denmark ( da, Danmarks Tekniske Universitet), often simply referred to as DTU, is a polytechnic university and school of engineering. It was founded in 1829 at the initiative of Hans Christian Ørsted as Denmark's fir ...

. She obtained her DPhil in

Human Genetics Human genetics is the study of inheritance as it occurs in human beings. Human genetics encompasses a variety of overlapping fields including: classical genetics, cytogenetics, molecular genetics, biochemical genetics, genomics, population gen ...

from the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in contin ...

in 2003.

Career and research

After obtaining her doctorate, Paracchini held a post-doctoral research position with the

Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics Wellcome () is a supermarket chain owned by British conglomerate Jardine Matheson Holdings via its DFI Retail Group subsidiary. The Wellcome supermarket chain is one of the two largest supermarket chains in Hong Kong, the other being Parkn ...

from 2003 to 2011. In 2011, she was awarded a

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, r ...

University Research Fellowship. Her research group at the

University of St Andrews (Aien aristeuein) , motto_lang = grc , mottoeng = Ever to ExcelorEver to be the Best , established = , type = Public research university Ancient university , endowment ...

School of Medicine explores the genetic underpinnings of human behavioral traits like handedness, and neurodevelopment disorders like dyslexia by combining large genetic screenings for quantitative measures followed by gene function characterization. In 2008, while working at the University of Oxford, she carried out a study on reading abilities in a cohort of 7 to 9 years old British children. The research established that the same variants of the KIAA0319 gene, already associated with dyslexia, affect the ability to read, even in the absence of a formal diagnosis of dyslexia. In 2014 she proposed that the same mechanisms that establish left/right asymmetry in the body (e.g.

Nodal signaling The Nodal signaling pathway is a signal transduction pathway important in regional and cellular differentiation during embryonic development. The Nodal family of proteins, a subset of the transforming growth factor beta (TGFβ) superfamily, i ...

and

ciliogenesis Ciliogenesis is defined as the building of the cell's antenna (primary cilia) or extracellular fluid mediation mechanism ( motile cilium). It includes the assembly and disassembly of the cilia during the cell cycle. Cilia are important organell ...

) also play a role in the development of brain asymmetry and contribute to handedness . She also contributed to the largest study of human handedness in the world giving the best estimate of 10.6% for left-handedness.

Honours and prizes

* 2005 European Society of Human Genetics, Young Investigator Award for Outstanding Science * 2011 Royal Society University Research Fellowship * 2014 Member of the

Young Academy of Scotland The Young Academy of Scotland is a Scottish organization of young people from the sciences humanities, professions, arts, business and civil society. It was established by the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2011. The members (equal numbers of wo ...

* 2018 Fellow of the

Royal Society of Biology The Royal Society of Biology (RSB), previously called the Society of Biology, is a learned society and professional association in the United Kingdom created to advance the interests of biology in academia, industry, education, and research. Fo ...

* 2019 Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...

In 2019, Paracchini featured in the Royal Society of Edinburgh's Women in Science in Scotland exhibition, which celebrated some of Scotland’s leading female scientists.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Paracchini, Silvia Italian geneticists Women geneticists Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellows of the Royal Society of Biology Year of birth missing (living people) Living people