Italia Di Liegro (IDL) has been a full professor of biochemistry in the Faculty of Medical Sciences at Palermo University. She has been mainly involved in studying chromatin organization and, in particular, the molecular mechanisms that regulate histone synthesis, both in embryonal systems (the first period of her scientific career) and in the rat-developing nervous system (since the late 1980s). These latter studies allowed for the demonstration that the regulation of histone variant expression in the rat brain is mainly post-transcriptional and involves both specific and general RNA-binding factors. In particular, at least two cDNAs have been cloned in Di Liegro's laboratory that encodes novel proteins (PIPPin and LPI), possibly involved in this regulation. In parallel, IDL has been involved in setting up and analyzing an in vitro model of the blood–brain barrier (BBB).