Affiliation: University of Siena, Department of Life Sciences

A long-time pollen scientist, Dr. Giampiero Cai has studied pollen and the pollen tube, especially the cytoskeleton and cell wall. He gained his expertise within a research group historically focused on the study of reproduction in plants. At the beginning of his career, Dr. Giampiero Cai worked mainly on the cytoskeleton and cell wall. Subsequently, he expanded his research horizons by studying the metabolic aspects of pollen in relation to cell wall building. More recently, the study of such processes is channeled into the overall response of pollen during the self-incompatibility reaction. Currently, Dr. Giampiero Cai is a professor of Botany at the University of Siena, and his research interests focus on the relationship between plants, environmental stresses, and productivity, with a specific eye on the effects of environmental stresses on the reproduction of plants of agricultural interest. Much of his recent work is on the effect of environmental stresses (such as temperature stress and UV radiation-induced stress) on pollen development and pollen tube growth. The research is undertaken with a multidisciplinary approach, from metabolomics to proteomics, from genetics to microscopy.