Research interests
Modelling the interactions between proteins and inorganic surfaces/nanoparticles. Developing Coarse Grained Models for Nanoparticle-Protein Interactions. Developing Atomistic Force Fields for Molecular Dynamics. Optical properties of molecules interacting with metallic nanoparticles.
Mastering Molecular Dynamics (AMBER, GROMACS) and Docking (SDA) tools for the simulation of biological systems in complex environments. Developing Docking tools for large bimolecules as well as novel force fields (FF) parameters for classical simulations.
Biographical sketch
Professional History
- Since Oct 2010: CNR Researcher at S3 CNR-NANO, Modena, Italy
- Oct 2007-Oct 2010: Post-doc at S3 CNR-NANO, Modena, Italy
- Apr 2004-Oct 2007: Post-doc at ISOF-CNR, Bologna, Italy
- Feb 2002-Apr 2004: Post-doc at Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Education History
- 1999-2002 PhD in Chemistry at University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy
- 2000-2001 Marie Curie PhD Fellow at Physics Department of University of Ulm, Germany
Teaching
2017,2018: Adjunt Professor, "Chemical Physics of Biomolecules", Master Degree in Physics, Univ. Modena and R.E.
2016,2015,2009,2008: Teaching Assistant of Exercise classes of General Physics at Univ. of SMR, Dep. of Engineering
Member of Editorial Boards:
09.2014-today: Member of the editorial board for Journal of SAME
01.2016-01.2017: Associate Editor for RSC Advances , Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry
Research Visits:
• July 2019: HPC-Europe3 at ICP-Stuttgart to collab. with Prof. C. Holm
• June 2010: HPC-Europe++ at BSC-Barcelona to collab. with Prof. J. Luque
• Apr 2010: STM at HITS-Heidelberg to collab. with Prof. R. Wade
• Sept 2009: STM at ORNL-Oak Ridge to collab. with Prof. M. Fuentes-Cabrera
• May 2009: DFG at TUM-Dresden to collab. with Prof. G. Cuniberti
Selected publications
1. Brancolini G., Lopez H., Corni S., Tozzini V. "Low-Resolution Models for the Interaction Dynamics of Coated Gold Nanoparticles with beta2-microglobulin" Int. J. Mol. Sci. (2019), 20, 3866; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms20163866
2. Brancolini G., Tozzini V. "Building Minimalist Models for Functionalized Metal Nanoparticles" Front. Mol. Biosci., (02 July 2019); https://doi.org/10.3389/fmolb.2019.00050
3. Tozzini V., Brancolini G. "Coarse Grained and Multi-scale modeling of biofunctionalized nanoparticles",(2019), Curr. Opin. Colloid In. 41, 66-73.
4. Brancolini G., Bellucci L., Maschio M.C., Di Felice R., Corni S. "Protein and peptide interactions with nanostructured gold surfaces: a challenge for nanoscience", (2019), Curr. Opin. Colloid In. 41, 86-94.
5. Ray M., Brancolini G., Jiang Z., Cuadros A., Burden A., Cao Milan R., Rana S., Mout R., Landis R.F., Corni S. and Rotello V. M. "More is better: Supercharging Proteins increases Binding Affinity at High Ionic Strengths" (2018) under review on ACS Nano
6. Brancolini G., Maschio M. C., Corni S. "Salt bridges regulate dimer formation of beta2-microglobulin amyloidogenic variants" (2018) JSAME, 3, 35-60.
7. Brancolini, G., Maschio M. C., Cantarutti C., Corazza A., Fogolari F., Corni S., Esposito G. "Citrate stabilized Gold Nanoparticles interfere with Amyloid Fibril formation: D76N and DN6 Variants." Nanoscale (2018), 10, 4793.
8. Brancolini, G., Cantarutti C., Raimondi S., Corazza A., Giorgetti S., Ballico M., Zanini S., Palmisano G., Bertoncin P., Marchese L., Mangione P., Bellotti V., Corni S., Fogolari F., Esposito G. "Citrate-stabilized gold nanoparticles hinder fibrillogenesis of a pathological variant of beta2-Microglobulin." Nanoscale (2017), 9, 3941.
9. Carrillo-Parramon, O., Brancolini, G., Corni, S. A Dynamical Coarse-Grained Model to disclose Allosteric control of Misfolding beta2-Microglobulin. RSC Advances (2016), 6, 93111.
10. Brancolini, G.; Corazza, A.; Vuano, M.; Fogolari, F.; Mimmi, M. C.; Bellotti, V.; Stoppini, M.; Corni, S.; Esposito, G. Probing the Influence of Citrate-Capped Gold Nanoparticles on an Amyloidogenic Protein ACS Nano (2015) ACS, 9, 2600.