Joana PatrÃcia Da Silva Abrantes
Auxiliary Researcher
Immunogenetics, Microbes and Infectious Diseases
CIBIO, Centro de Investigacao em Biodiversidade e Recursos Geneticos
Portugal
Biography
"The major focus of my research is the study of the host-pathogen co-evolutionary processes by using lagomorph species and their viral diseases as research models (e.g. myxomatosis, rabbit haemorrhagic disease and European brown hare syndrome). The study of the host-pathogen co-evolution implies the characterisation of the evolutionary patterns of change in the host and the pathogen that have resulted from their interaction. Therefore, I have been characterising host genes that code for or are involved in the synthesis of receptors used by viruses to initiate their infectious process (e.g. chemokine receptors and ABH antigens) aiming at finding alterations that may confer resistance to the host. I have been also studying the mechanisms driving viral evolution (e.g. recombination, mutation, natural selection) that might be involved in the evasion of viruses from the host immune response."
Research Interest
Host-pathogen co-evolutionary processes by using lagomorph species and their viral diseases as research models
Publications
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Fontanesi L, Di Palma F, Flicek P, Smith AT, Thulin CG, Alves PC, the Lagomorph Genomics Consortium (including Abrantes J, Campos R, Carneiro M, Esteves PJ, Melo-Ferreira J (2016) LaGomiCs—Lagomorph Genomics Consortium: An International Collaborative Effort for Sequencing the Genomes of an Entire Mammalian Order. Journal of Heredity, , 107(4): 295-308.
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de Sousa-Pereira P, Abrantes J, Baldauf HM, Keppler O, Esteves PJ (2016) Evolutionary study of leporid CD4 reveals a hotspot of genetic variability within the D2 domain. Immunogenetics, 68(6-7): 477-482.
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Lopes AM, Silverio D, Magalhaes MJ, Areal H, Alves PC, Esteves PJ, Abrantes J (2017) Characterization of old RHDV strains by complete genome sequencing identifies a novel genetic group. Scientific Reports, 7: 13599.
