• DQ - Departamento de Química
    Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia/UNL
    Edifício Departamental
    Campus de Caparica
    2829-516 Caparica

    Portugal

Accepting PhD Students

PhD projects

Microbial Stress - Bacterial Peroxidases in Pathogenic Bacteria

Microbial Stress - Copper stress in Pathogenic Bacteria

Antimicrobial activity of organometallic compounds

Calculated based on number of publications stored in Pure and citations from Scopus
20012024

Research activity per year

Personal profile

Personal information

Sofia R. Pauleta has finished her Ph.D. in Biochemistry-Biophysical Chemistry, in 2003 from the NOVA University of Lisbon. In 2007, after a post-doctoral fellowship under the co-supervision of Prof. Ivano Bertini and Prof. Paola Turano, at CERM, University of Florence (Italy) she returned to Portugal. She was awarded an Assistant Researcher position at REQUIMTE, followed by a IF-FCT-2013 researcher, a highly competitive program, as Principal Investigator, and in 2019 started the tenure-track position as Assistant Professor at FCT NOVA (teaching at the level of BSc, Master and PhD degree), and since 2022 is the Coordinator of Master degree in Biochemistry FCT NOVA.

Since 2009, after receiving her first independent research grant she started her own research lab, as PI of the Microbial Stress Lab@UCIBIO NOVA. At the moment, her team has 1 postdoctoral researcher (Junior researcher), 2 PhD students, 2 Master students (1 is an Erasmus students from Italy) and 2 undergraduate students.

Her lab uses Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus, as model organisms. These bacteria are considered by CDC to be urgent health threats and are classified by WHO as high priority pathogens for R&D of new antibiotics; thus, Microbial Stress Lab aims to identify and characterize enzymes as new drug targets, which will have an impact on both the health care system and society. These enzymes are involved in detoxification of reactive oxygen species, metal resistance and alternative electron acceptors (nitrite and nitrate), which are essential during infection. In addition, her lab has been focusing on the contribution of these enzymes/protein to biofilm formation and on the identification of compounds with antimicrobial activity and anti-biofilm as possible inhibitors of these enzymes.

Her lab has expertise in steady-state kinetics, spectroscopic techniques (visible, EPR, NMR, CD, resonance Raman), biomolecular NMR, microcalorimetry (ITC and DSC) and heterologous production of metalloproteins, biofilm formation and composition (E. coli, methicillin-resistant S. aureus). 

Education/Academic qualification

Biochemistry, Doctorate, Electron transfer complexes between Paracoccus pantotrophus cytochrome c peroxidase and its electron donors, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa

1 Oct 199830 Sept 2002

Award Date: 7 Nov 2003

Biotechnology, Bachelor, Applied Chemistry, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia (FCT)

1 Oct 199330 Jun 1998

Award Date: 30 Jun 1998

Keywords

  • QD Chemistry
  • Biochemistry
  • Structural Biology
  • Microbial Metal Stress
  • Metalloenzymes
  • Biophysics
  • Oxidative Stress
  • Copper proteins
  • Bacterial Peroxidases
  • Denitrification
  • Cytochromes
  • Transcriptomics
  • Nitrous oxide reductase

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