Elena was born in Rome, Italy. She obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences with honours from the Sapienza University of Rome in 2016. The experimental thesis work was carried out in the plant Ecophysiology laboratory of Prof. L. Gratani and the Research Topic was the phenotypic plasticity in morphological and anatomical variations of leaves of Mediterranean species in response to light. She obtained her Master’s degree in Genetics and Molecular Biology with honours from the Sapienza University of Rome in 2018. Master's Degree thesis work carried out in the Epigenetics and Gene Regulation laboratory of Prof. Rodolfo Negri. The Research Topic was the study of the role of histone demethylase KDM5B in maintaining genomic stability in breast cancer cells using both miRNAs and chemical inhibitors. After her Master’s degree, she worked for six months as visiting researcher in the laboratory of Prof. Giorgio Dieci at the University of Parma. She investigated the potential of Alu RNAs as novel epigenetic players and molecular biomarkers in cancer biology, by analysing the expression of specific Alu transcripts in human fibroblasts infected with Adenovirus-5 E1A mutants. She started her Ph.D. scholarship in Cellular and Developmental Biology in the Prof. Rodolfo Negri Lab at the University of Rome, La Sapienza in 2019. The Ph.D. project's aim is the characterization of transcriptional variants and protein isoforms of the histone demethylase KDM5B in breast cancer cell lines. During her Ph.D. she moved to Dundee to join as a visiting Ph.D. Student to the Virginia De Cesare Group in the MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit to investigate the biological impact of non-canonical ubiquitylation pathways.

PUBLICATIONS

• Di Nisio E, Lupo G, Licursi V and Negri R (2021) The Role of Histone Lysine Methylation in the Response of Mammalian Cells to Ionizing Radiation. Front. Genet. 12:639602. DOI: 10.3389/fgene.2021.639602

• Valerio Licursi, Wei Wang, Elena Di Nisio, Francesco P. Cammarata, Rosaria Acquaviva, Giorgio Russo, Lorenzo Manti, Mariangela Cestelli Guidi, Emiliano Fratini, Gihan Kamel, Roberto Amendola, Pietro Pisciotta & Rodolfo Negri (2021) Transcriptional modulations induced by proton irradiation in mice skin in function of adsorbed dose and distance, Journal of Radiation Research and Applied Sciences, 14:1, 260-270, DOI: 10.1080/16878507.2021.1949675

• Simona Cantarella, Elena Di Nisio, Davide Carnevali, Giorgio Dieci, Barbara Montanini; Interpreting and integrating big data in non-coding RNA research. Emerg Top Life Sci 16 August 2019; 3 (4): 343–355. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1042/ETLS20190004