[1] Born in Palermo, Italy, Pirotta migrated to the United States and enrolled at Harvard University.
While at Harvard, he obtained undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral fellowships in physical chemistry and molecular biology.
He later moved to Europe where he began studying gene regulation in bacteriophages and Drosophila (fruit flies).
Pirotta returned to the United States, earning a full professorship at the Baylor College of Medicine in 1992.
Pirrotta studied how response elements of PcG and TrxG effect how the silent and active chromatin are inherited in Drosophila melanogaster.