organisation - the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência

COMPUTATIONAL
GENOMICS
José Pereira-Leal Principal Investigator
PhD in Biomedical Sciences, Universidade do Porto, Portugal, 2001
Post-Doc at EMBL European Bioinformatics Institute - Cambridge, UK
Post-doc & Career Development Fellow at MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology,
Cambridge, UK
Head of Bioinformatics Unit
Principal Investigator at the IGC since 2006
link to external website
We are interested in the evolutionary mechanisms underlying the origins and
evolution of cellular life and the complex structures within the cell, the transitions
to multi-cellularity, and the medical applications of evolutionary genomics.
Our research encompasses themes that are broadly classified as evolutionary
cell biology, systems biology, pathogenomics, and translational or medical
bioinformatics.
EVOLUTIONARY CELL BIOLOGY
The aims of this project are to study the origins of cellular structures, and to
develop the methods and resources that enable evolutionary studies in cell
biology. We have developed three data integration platforms: TrafficDB, CentrioleDB
and SporeDB, where automated methods for sequence classification are
integrated with morphological information, described by image data and novel
controlled vocabularies.
GROUP MEMBERS
Joana Cardoso (Post-doc, started in May)
Pedro Coelho (Post-doc, started in October)
Sofia Braga (PhD student)
Yoan Diekmman (PhD student)
Beatriz Gomes (MSc student, started in October)
Diogo Santos (Research student, started in November)
COLLABORATORS
José Luis Passos Coelho (Instituto Português de Oncologia
Dr. Francisco Gentil, Portugal)
Paula Chaves (Instituto Português de Oncologia Dr. Francisco Gentil,
Portugal)
David Pellman (Harvard Medical School, USA)
Max Loda (Harvard Medical Shool, USA)
Monica Bettencourt-Dias (IGC, Portugal)
PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT IN SCIENCE
Public lecture - AR, Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, November
In collaboration with the Cell Cycle Regulation laboratory we characterised the
evolutionary pathway of the centriolar duplication machinery using both computational
and experimental approaches (published). We have also discovered
that there is a selective loss of genetic redundancy when bacteria adopt an
obligate intracellular lifestyle, such as chloroplasts and mitochondria (accepted
for publication).
CELL BIOLOGY OF CANCER
Within this project we aim to understand the molecular basis of tumour heterogeneity
and cancer progression.
We are studying the molecular and clinical heterogeneity of breast cancer, and
our preliminary results suggest two distinct entities, driven by different molecules
and processes and with distinct outcomes. Using gene expression data
we have identified novel prognostic markers for breast cancer. We are currently
collaborating with pathologists at Portuguese hospitals to test our computational
predictions by immunohistochemistry in human samples.
IGC ANNUAL REPORT ‘11
RESEARCH GROUPS
57