“Anybody Should Follow Their Own Footsteps”: An Interview with Pietro Alano

Pietro Alano (26 May 1959) is Principal Investigator at Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS), Rome, Italy. After his Ph.D. (University of Milan, 1986) on the bacteriophage-E. coli interplay he entered molecular parasitology (Woods Hole course Biology of Parasitism, 1986; University of Edinburgh, 1987-1991) and joined ISS in 1991. Over the past 30 years Pietro’s team has investigated genetics, cell biology and development of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum and human and mosquito host-parasite interactions. This work, described in over 90 publications, generated ‘omics’ datasets, molecular tools and transgenic lines recently used in anti-parasite transmission drug discovery and development of innovative P. falciparum diagnostics tools. What comes below is an interview with Pietro Alano (PA) conducted by Mostafa Pourhaji (MP).