Dr. Gabriele Meloni
- Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry
- Fellow, Dean and Cindy Sherry Professor in Chemistry
In 2022, Dr. A. Dean Sherry and his wife, Dr. Cynthia Sherry BS’78, established the Dean and Cindy Sherry Professorship in Chemistry, an endowment that will support the chemistry and biochemistry research-enhancing activities of the professorship holder.
“Mentoring and working with a group of talented students and scientists here at UTD is a great privilege. With passion and curiosity, we aim to provide new fundamental understanding of the processes controlling the chemistry of metals in biological systems.”
Dr. Gabriele Meloni’s research focuses on gaining a better understanding of how transition metals are stored and transported in and out of cells. Transition metals include both essential trace nutrients, such as zinc, copper and iron, and toxic metals, such as cadmium and lead.
Because transition metals are chemically reactive, living systems have developed a sophisticated network of proteins to finely control their homeostasis. Dysregulation of cellular metal levels can cause cellular toxicity and can lead to several pathologies, including cancer and neurodegenerative disorders.
Meloni’s work is providing molecular-level chemical insights into how metal transport and storage processes occur in living organisms. Gaining a better understanding of the basic principles that control these processes could lay the foundation to develop applications in biotechnology, medicine and agriculture.
Meloni’s research includes investigating how transition metals are recognized and transported by a diverse class of transmembrane proteins, present in all forms of life, that work as ion pumps and transporters, and associated metallochaperones and metalloproteins that act as shuttles to transfer metals to cellular targets. He also studies metallothioneins (MTs), a ubiquitous class of small metal-binding proteins, and the key roles MTs play in cellular buffering, storage and distribution of essential metals, as well as their ability to detoxify metals in cells.
Meloni also engages in outreach to undergraduates and high school students to promote awareness, interest and societal knowledge in inorganic biochemistry.
In 2021, Meloni received a Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation to support his research on transition-metal transport processes. His research also has been funded by Maximizing Investigators’ Research Awards from the National Institutes of Health and research grants from The Welch Foundation.
A native of Italy, Meloni received a technical degree in chemistry and a Master of Science in biotechnology from the University of Milan, and a PhD in bioinorganic chemistry and biochemistry from the University of Zurich. He was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the California Institute of Technology and at Aarhus University in Denmark. He joined The University of Texas at Dallas School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in 2015.