ALESSANDRO BERTERO, 2021

Career Development Award Project Title

Functional dynamics of chromatin topology in congenital heart disease, 2021

Who he is

Alessandro Bertero is Associate Professor of Applied Biology at the Molecular Biotechnology Center “Guido Tarone“, University of Torino, where he leads the Armenise Harvard Laboratory of Genome Architecting. After training in Turin and Cambridge, and postdoctoral work at the University of Washington, he relocated to Italy to launch his independent group in 2021 with the support of the Giovanni Armenise Harvard Foundation Career Development Award. His laboratory combines stem cell biology, genomics, gene regulation and bioengineering to understand how cell identity is established and to translate that knowledge into regenerative medicine and cellular agriculture. Since returning to Italy, he has secured major competitive support including an ERC Starting Grant, the FEBS Excellence Award, Additional Ventures support, PRIN funding, and a Good Food Institute research grant.

What he does

The lab long-term vision is to improve human wellbeing through genome architecting: reading, interpreting, writing and scaling cell states to build better models and better tissues. The group studies how chromatin architecture, transcriptional control and programmable gene circuits govern cell fate in pluripotent stem cells and developing muscle lineages. This work supports two main translational directions: regenerative medicine, especially cardiac remuscularization in the context of congenital heart disease, and cellular agriculture, where scalable stem-cell engineering can enable cultivated meat and seafood. By integrating single-cell perturbation, 3D genome biology, genome engineering and scalable differentiation platforms, the lab aims to turn mechanistic insight into robust and practical cell manufacturing strategies.