Federica Casolari – University of Aberdeen

Welcome to the “Blue Biome Boffins” Campaign where we interview different participants in the BlueRemediomics project, from Early Career Scientists to Senior Researchers, to learn more about their role and valuable work in making this project a success.

For this interview, we sat down with Federica Casolari, postdoc researcher at the chemistry department of the University of Aberdeen (UK). Her research focuses mainly on the discovery of antimicrobial peptides from the marine environment. She also has a keen interest in the legal side of science, which plays a big role in the BlueRemediomics project. We talked to Federica about her interest in the science-law interface, the importance of the new BBNJ agreement and her aspirations of becoming a patent attorney! 

Born and raised in Italy, Federica moved to Aberdeen, Scotland to do her Master’s degree in analytical chemistry. Following this, she stayed with the university to start a PhD project on “Developing an enzymatic system for methacrylate intermediates and esters”. Having successfully completed her PhD thesis, she is now five months into her postdoc at the chemistry department of the University of Aberdeen, where her research focuses on the discovery of antimicrobial peptides from the marine environment.

How did you get interested in this interface of chemistry and biology, and why did you choose a biology focused PhD coming from kind of a chemistry background?

Federica Casolari: I originally moved to Aberdeen for a Master’s in analytical chemistry and was fortunate enough to be offered a PhD thesis project in the Marine Biodiscovery Center, which focuses mainly on the discovery of natural products from the marine environment. Despite my initial wish to do a Master in analytical chemistry, I realised quite quickly that I found the interface or “meeting point” between chemistry and microbiology especially interesting. Following that, I had to brush up my knowledge on how to grow bugs, bacteria and fungi and how to understand them. I realised that at the end of the day, to be able to discover a sustainable way of creating potential pharmaceutical products, microbiology needs to be involved. 

What are your ambitions for the future? What are your primary research or career interests in the next few years? 

Federica Casolari: After finishing the PhD, I’ve just started a postdoc with BlueRemediomics and it’s really nice being a researcher on the project, while at the same time also helping my supervisors in law with the BBNJ agreement and in IP law. I really like this interface between the two – being able to use my science skills and applying them to the “law world” which is less science based. A possible career path that really interests me at the moment is becoming a patent attorney, but I do also enjoy public outreach, and public engagement and would love to create a career where I could also incorporate science communication-based activities. That’s my vague plan at the moment, let’s see where it takes me!

Can you briefly describe your role in the BlueRemediomics project as if you were talking to a non-scientist? 

Federica Casolari: I’m a postdoctoral researcher and work in a laboratory, where we are basically trying to find compounds that could potentially have pharmaceutical applications. I’m also assisting my other supervisor in law with the BBNJ agreement, which is a treaty that focuses on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. It’s a very hot topic at the moment, especially in my field where we work with marine resources. 

What is the most exciting aspect of your research in the BlueRemediomics Project?  

Federica Casolari: What I really enjoy about the project is that, since the very start, there have been so many different opportunities for collaboration, networking and travelling. I wasn’t fortunate enough to be able to travel much during the time of my PhD, but since I’ve started this postdoc that completely changed. I’m only in my fifth month and already have three conferences planned for the next two months. It’s great to see how many opportunities there are for me already to share my research and findings among a large network. That’s really the part that attracts me day by day – the fact that there is so much collaboration between Horizon Europe funded projects and other teams. 

This might be slightly much to ask of a postdoc researcher, but have you discovered any important milestones or breakthroughs as part of your research that you’re particularly proud of in BlueRemediomics?

Federica Casolari: Maybe not necessarily a breakthrough, because I’ve only been doing this for five months, but I’ve been focusing my time on developing a method for the detection of compounds directly from the agar plates of the strain to try to improve the detection through LCMS based analysis. The idea is that this will help reducing the resources and time during the first stage of the detection process. Usually, you would go through the first detection, followed by a small-scale growth, and then a large-scale growth of your strain to get to a pure compound. Instead, I’m trying to find out if it’s possible to already see a variety of compounds directly from the agar plate. So far, I’ve been focusing on developing this method. We have some good findings, we also have some uncertain ones, so hopefully we can get something more concrete and more official in the future. 

Good to know: An agar plate is a thin layer of nutrient gel in a Petri dish, used to grow bacteria and fungi in the microbiology laboratory. A variety of nutrients can be added to the agar to preferentially grow different bacteria. 

What implications would this new method of detecting compounds have on a bigger scale if it was applied going forward?  

Federica Casolari: If you think about the marine environment, most of the time you extract microorganisms that live under very strange conditions. For instance, you may have a lack of light or very deep pressure, very low temperatures etc. Once you transfer these strains in the lab, it’s often very difficult for them to grow as they need very specific environments, or nutrients. This means that the timescale for them to grow to a stage where you can actually isolate compounds that they produce is very long – it’s quite time consuming.

A method that can create a screening of all possible metabolites these microorganisms contain, will really help reduce the time you’re currently wasting. I have strains that grow in a month. With this method, I could get some kind of understanding of what the microorganisms do before I even grow them for a month. It’s kind of like a fingerprinting of what their potential can be.

I heard you joined the Gordon Research Conference on Marine Natural Products this March in Ventura, California. Can you briefly explain what you did there?

Federica Casolari: I presented a poster about the BlueRemediomics project and also helped to facilitate the Policy Workshop on the BBNJ agreement that we organised from the University of Aberdeen. We created a workshop that was quite interactive. In the last few years, significant policy changes have occurred that may affect how marine natural products research is conducted. Whilst the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing regulates access to marine biodiversity within a state’s jurisdiction, a new UN Agreement will regulate access to biological materials in the ocean beyond national jurisdiction (the UN Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction or BBNJ Agreement). Often researchers are aware of the Nagoya protocol, but they’re not so knowledgeable about the BBNJ agreement, including what it means, what the implications are and so on. What we aimed to do with this workshop was to create a bit of awareness among science-based researchers and non-science-based stakeholders.

We’re coming to our last question. Can you name one good piece of advice to Early Career Researchers who are interested in getting into the field of biochemistry? 

Federica Casolari: I think what I would advise is to keep an open mind because microbiology and bugs specifically are unpredictable. They behave the way they want to – one week can be completely different from the next. So, be prepared for failure, it’s not your fault. I had to learn this the hard way, because in chemistry everything is very square and reproducible. While microbiology is often not like that at all.