Pier Giorgio Righetti

Education and career Righetti attended the University of Pavia in Italy, from which he received a Ph.D in Organic Chemistry in 1965.

In 1971, Righetti accepted a position at the University of Milan as a professor of biochemistry. He remained there for the next 24 years. He then worked for two years at the University of Calabria with Roberto Bartolino, and for another eight years at the University of Verona with Franco Tagliaro and Mahmud Hamdan. Finally he returned to Milan to work at the Polytechnic University of Milan, where he established a proteomics lab. He became professor emeritus at age seventy, under mandatory retirement laws.

Righetti has published more than 750 papers, He has created 10 patents and written 11 books. Righetti was closely involved with the journals Electrophoresis (founded 1980), and its sister journal Proteomics (founded 2001). He served as a member of the editorial board of Electrophoresis from its founding by Bertold J. Radola onwards. He has also worked on the editorial boards of the Journal of Chromatography, the Journal of Capillary Electrophoresis, the Journal of Biochemical and Biophysical Methods, BioTechniques, and the Journal of Proteomics. His work on immobilized pH gradients led to pioneering mapping of human proteins using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. His multicompartment electrolyzer (MCE) for purifying proteins using amphoteric buffering membranes, has been used for pre-fractionation in proteome analysis. His work on capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) supports the identification of DNA point mutations. He has been involved in the development of large hexapeptide libraries for the identification of unique protein sequences, and in combinatorial peptide ligand capture. believed to have belonged to the Italian explorer Marco Polo in 1271. After four centuries in Shangdu, China, the Bible was given to Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, in 1685, and became part of the holdings of the Laurentian Library in Florence, Italy.

Next, Righetti sought to develop non-invasive techniques for analyzing the proteins left on manuscripts and diaries. In 2015 he, Gleb Zilberstein and others reported an analysis of pages from an original manuscript by Mikhail Bulgakov: Master and Margarita. They used resin beads which were placed on the page to extract proteins. From the margins of the manuscript, the team detected protein biomarkers indicative of kidney disease and the painkiller morphine. Bulgakov finished the novel a few weeks before he died of an inherited kidney disorder.

When it was suggested that the beads might cause damage,

In 2017, Righetti, Zilberstein, d'Amato and others analyzed five letters and a blood-stained shirt that was worn by Anton Chekhov as he died. The researchers used beads in EVA films to collect proteins. Then they extracted and purified them, and used liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry to analyze the results. They found traces of spittle, saliva, 108 proteins found in human blood, and proteins characteristic of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, from which Chekhov was known to have suffered. Unexpectedly, they also found ITIH4, a protein associated with blood clots. Their results open up the possibility that the immediate cause of Chekhov's death may have been a stroke.

Books Titles include:

Awards 2014, AES Lifetime Achievement Award, AES Electrophoresis Society 2014, Distinguished Achievement in Proteomic Sciences Award, Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) 2012, Inaugural Beckman Award, at the Microscale Bioseparation Symposium, c/o Beckman‐Coulter, Inc. 2011, Honorary member of the Spanish Proteomics Society 2008, Csaba Horvath Medal (also given to Barry L. Karger), Connecticut Separation Science Council, Yale University 2006, CaSSS Award (also given to Walter Jennings), California Separation Science Society 2006, Special issue of Electrophoresis, published in Righetti's honor 1997, Milano Award for advanced genetic research in mutational analysis, ATB'97 Conference, Milano, November-1997