Team details
Isabel A. Abreu (Principal Investigator)
Isabel Abreu is the PI of the Proteome Regulation in Plants (PRPlants) laboratory at the Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica, António Xavier (ITQB), from Universidade Nova de Lisboa. She is also ITQB Users’ Director of Mass Spectrometry Unit (UniMS).
PRPlants lab studies the fast regulation of the cell proteome by post-translational modifications, when the plant is exposed to changes in the environment.
Isabel was a Ciência Researcher at Instituto de Biologia Molecular e Celular, in Porto, postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University’s Laboratory of Plant Molecular Biology in New York where she focused on post-translational regulation in response to abiotic stress, and a research associate at Brookhaven National Laboratory, studying oxidative stress response. Isabel earned her PhD in Biochemistry from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
To support her line of research, Isabel has ensured independent funding through European, national, and private grants. She is PI/Portuguese-Coordinator of a Plant-KBBE grant, and she is work-package leader in a FP7 KBBE consortium. She was PI of task leader in several national grant, and is task-leader in 2 FCT-grants. She maintained a funded collaboration with BASF Plant Science (until 2013) and has established a new partnership with COPSEMAR to test rice proteins as positive leads for abiotic stress improvement. She has a large international collaboration network harnessed in the European grants obtained and on student mobility.
email: abreu@itqb.unl.pt
Post-Docs
Bruno Alexandre
Bruno M. Alexandre obtained his PhD in Biology (Molecular Biology) in 2012 from Faculty of Sciences of University of Lisbon (FCUL) under supervision of Dr. Deborah Penque from the National Institute of Health Dr. Ricardo Jorge (INSA) and Prof. Ana Crespo from FCUL, and co-supervision of Prof Thomas P. Conrads from Department of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology, University of Pittsburgh. PhD thesis was entitled "Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: A Proteomics Approach". Still in 2012, he joined INSA to collaborate in a FCT-Harvard Medical School Program project as a Post-Doc Researcher.
Since 2013, he is a Post-Doc Researcher in the GPlantS Unit, ITQB/iBET. His research interests are mainly in the Proteomics field, in the development of different state-of-the-art applications. This includes the use of complementary mass spectrometers such as MALDI-TOF-TOF, ESI-LTQ, ESI-LTQ-Orbitrap and TripleTOF instruments to investigate post-translational modifications (e.g. phosphorylation, acetylation, ubiquitination, SUMOylation).
Cátia Nunes
Cátia graduated in Applied Plant Biology and has a Msc. degree also from FCUL where she studied the effects of drought stress on a legume. In 2015 she concluded her PhD in Biology (Biochemistry) granted by UNL. Her project was executed at Rothamsted Research (UK) under the supervision of Dr. Matthew Paul. The work on sugar signalling gave new insights into the T6P/SnRK1 pathway and showed how it prevails over carbon supply in the regulation of growth under stress. She is interested in learning the mechanisms by which crops adapt to abiotic stress and in applications of those new insights. She joined GPlantS Unit in ITQB/iBET in 2015 doing just that (Project PLANT-KBBE). She is studying the only DELLA protein of rice, SLR1, aiming at untying its role as a growth regulator from its function in abiotic stress tolerance (particularly, salinity, a real problem affecting rice yield under field conditions). To do so she is looking at rice responses from genes to proteins and their post-translational modifications up to physiological outcomes.
PhD Students
Mafalda Rodrigues
Mafalda Rodrigues graduated in Cellular Biology and Biotechnology by FCUL. She has a Msc. in Biotechnology by IST.
Mafalda is studying the proteome response to induced water stress in Arabidopsis, with a particular emphasis on the SUMOylation role. She is using 2-DE analysis and MS, to characterize the proteomic response of the dehydration stress and to identify the SUMOylation targets. In parallel, Mafalda is also studying the heterologous localization and activity of the extremophile D. radiodurans MnSOD protein in Arabidopsis.
Margarida Gomes Rosa
Margarida Gomes Rosa is a PhD student in plant biology. She graduated in Biochemistry and has a MsC in Human Biology and Environment, both at FCUL.
Margarida is interested in the study of post-translational modifications of proteins, such as SUMOylation, which plays a major role in stress response mechanisms in plants. Focusing on rice and its concerning vulnerability to drought conditions, she is studying the regulation of genes involved in the SUMO (de)conjugation machinery, with the goal of finding the key players in drought response. She is characterizing the response both at the gene and at the protein level, and also in different tissues.
Nuno Gonçalves
Nuno Gonçalves graduated and also has a Msc. degree in Cellular Biology and Biotechnology from Faculdade de Ciências - Universidade de Lisboa.
He is currently studying the role and regulation of the only DELLA protein of rice. He is researching the stress regulation of the only DELLA protein present in rice, SLR1, and its response to abiotic stresses, with a focus on salinity, to unveil a novel role of these proteins in crop tolerance to stress. As DELLA proteins are described to be mainly regulated at the post translation level, a several proteomic tools will be employed in order to characterise stress-induced post-translational modifications (PTMs), particularly SUMOylation, recently described to stabilise DELLA proteins.
Inês Matias Luís
Inês Matias Luís graduated in Biochemistry in 2009 and has a MSc in Biochemistry with specialization in Biomolecular Methods concluded in 2011, both at Universidade de Aveiro. Inês joined the lab in 2014 and is now a PhD student at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (class of 2016). Inês’ work mainly focus on the study of the regulation by post-translational modifications (PTMs) of the activity of key enzymes of the C4-metabolism.
She have been contributing to the European project “3to4” on a task that aims to comprehensively catalogue PTMs in key-enzymes of the plant C4-metabolism, in maize. Inês is working with gel-based MS approaches to separate and characterize the different protein-isoforms generated by the different combination of PTMs along the photoperiod. Further work will focus in the characterization of phophoenolpyruvate carboxylase activity and stability mediated by the newly discovered PTMs and its crosstalk.
Cecília Pina
Cecília is graduated in Applied Plant Biology by FCUL and is currently doing her PhD at GPlantS.
She is particularly interested in studying a rice calcium-dependent protein kinase (CDPK), OsCPK17, which seems to be involved in stress signal transduction pathways. Cecília is using genomic, physiologic and proteomic approaches to characterize this gene and enlighten its role in rice stress response.
Co-supervision with Sónia Negrão and Margarida Oliveira (Principal Supervisor)
André Cordeiro
André Cordeiro has a Msc in Biochemistry obtained at FCUL in 2009.
André started his PhD in 2011 and since then he has been studying rice transcription factors (TFs). His major interest is to better understand how the phytochrome-interaction factor 14 (OsPIF14) is involved in light signaling. André was able to prove that in fact OsPIF14 binds to phytochrome(1) and he is now further characterizing OsPIF14 at physiological and molecular level using rice mutants.
(1)Cordeiro, A. M. et al. Rice phytochrome-interacting factor protein OsPIF14 represses OsDREB1B gene expression through an extended N-box and interacts preferentially with the active form of phytochrome B. Biochim. Biophys. Acta 1859, 393–404 (2015).
Co-supervision with Nelson Saibo (Pricipal Supervisor)
Research Fellows
Vanessa Azevedo 
Vanessa Azevedo graduated in Biology by Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, in 2010. She also has a MSc in Biomedical Science with specialization in Molecular Biology by Instituto de Higiene e Medicina Tropical – Universidade Nova de Lisboa, concluding it in 2013.
Currently, Vanessa is involved with the European Project DELLA-STRESS. The aim of this project is to characterize the function of rice DELLA protein in response to abiotic stress. Her role in this project is to produce transformed rice lines, overexpressing or silencing genes of interest. Also she has lab management functions in the Unit.
