The broad thrust of research in the Conte laboratory is centred around the elucidation at the atomic level of the structure and interactions of biological macromolecules. We are particularly interested in both proteins and nucleic acids (especially RNA) and synergy with these interests have been mainly achieved with a study of proteins involved in RNA biology. The aim of our work is to understand the detailed mechanism of fundamental biological processes, some of which could have potentially interesting applications. To achieve this, biochemical and functional studies are allied to structural and biophysical methods such as NMR, X-ray crystallography, isothermal titration calorimetry, circular dichroism and fluorescence.

Most of the current projects are of interdisciplinary nature, entail collaborations with other research groups and span several research areas including cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and neurodegeneration.

Recently we have expanded our work towards the metabolomics profile analysis to identify biomarkers in a number of diseases and molecular mechanisms linked to disease.