Ricercatrice

Dipartimento di Biologia ed Evoluzione degli Organismi Marini

Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn
Villa Comunale
80121 Napoli - Italia

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ORCID:0009-0006-3973-1603

Curriculum vitae

Supervision

Maria Ina Arnone, SZN, https://arnonelab.it/
Andreas Hejnold, FSUJENA, https://hejnol-lab.com/
Gáspár Jékely, COS Heidelberg University, https://www.cos.uni-heidelberg.de/en/research-groups/gaspar-jekely
ZooCELL, Marie Sklodowska-Curie Doctoral Network, https://zoocell.eu/

Interessi di Ricerca

How do nervous systems, no matter their size, sense the world and coordinate behavior? Our brain contains around 86 billion neurons, while a sea urchin larva has only about one hundred. Yet both must solve the same fundamental challenges: detecting cues, integrating information, and responding in meaningful ways. My research asks what these very different systems can teach us about the evolution of neurons.
As a doctoral researcher in the Arnone lab, I study the larval nervous system of the Mediterranean sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus. This tiny, transparent organism provides a powerful window into how neurons are built, how they function, and how they may have evolved across the animal tree of life. To do this, I combine several cutting-edge approaches, including single-cell gene expression profiling, detailed 3D reconstructions of neurons, and live imaging of neuronal activity. I also develop new tools, such as transient transgenesis and state-of-the-art calcium imaging in sea urchin larvae, which open the door to studying their nervous system with unprecedented resolution.
By linking what neurons look like, what genes they express, and how they behave in real time, my work aims to uncover shared biological principles that shape nervous systems from simple larval circuits to the complexity of the human brain.

Pubblicazioni 

1. Zueva O, Hinman VF. (2023) Inducible in vivo genome editing in the sea star Patiria miniata. bioRxiv, doi:10.1101/2023.01.09.523328
2. Zheng M, Zueva O, Hinman VF. (2022) Regeneration of the larval sea star nervous system by wounding induced respecification to the Sox2 lineage. Elife, doi: 10.7554/eLife.72983.
3. Cary GA, McCauley BS, Zueva O, Pattinato J, Longabaugh W, Hinman VF. (2020) Systematic comparison of sea urchin and sea star developmental gene regulatory networks explains how novelty is incorporated in early development. Nat Commun., doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-20023-4.
4. Cary GA, Wolff A, Zueva O, Pattinato J, Hinman VF. (2019) Analysis of sea star larval regeneration reveals conserved processes of whole-body regeneration across the metazoa. BMC Biol., doi: 10.1186/s12915-019-0633-9.
5. Mashanov V, Zueva O. (2019) Radial Glia in Echinoderms. Dev Neurobiol., doi: 10.1002/dneu.22659.