Flora Tassone, PhD, received her bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” and her master’s in molecular biology from the Catholic University of Rome, Italy, in 1992, for her studies on Down syndrome. During the postdoctoral fellowship, first at the Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in Denver, Colorado, and then at the University of Colorado Health Science Center she continued to work on the identification of genes involved in Down syndrome and started to focus her attention on the molecular basis leading to Fragile X syndrome and autism spectrum disorders.

In 2000 she moved to the University of California, Davis, and focused her research on neurodevelopmental disorders including Fragile X syndrome and associated disorders, autism spectrum disorders, and 22q deletion syndrome. She is a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, and a MIND Institute investigator at the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine. The main focus of Dr. Tassone’s research is to understand the molecular mechanisms and the correlation with clinical involvements of neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders. Her expertise is in transcriptional and translational gene regulation, particularly of the Fragile X (FMR1) gene. Dr. Tassone is also a member of the NFXF’s Clinical Trials Committee and an advisor in the Research Readiness Program.