António Ferreira

Biography

António EN Ferreira is currently Assistant Professor of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, coordinator of the degree in Biochemistry, and member of the Enzymology group of the Center of Chemistry and Biochemistry of FCUL. Since his doctorate in 2002, he has focused much of his scientific research on theoretical and computational approaches to biochemistry and systems biology, in particular kinetic modeling, simulation and computational analysis of cellular processes to problems of quantification of the distribution of metabolic fluxes, parametrization of enzymatic kinetics in situ and evaluation of therapeutic targets. As a result of this research, he co-authored about 50 publications among scientific papers, articles in scientific conferences, and book chapters. One of the main applications has been the quantitative study of an important post-translational modification of proteins: glycation. This modification, once considered nonspecific and out of cellular control, has recently been recognized as having an important role in the regulation of cellular processes, modulating the interaction between proteins and regulating their activity. The investigation of the pathways involved in the catabolism of glycantes, by approaches of structural biology and systems biology, has been a recurring theme in most of the publications and also the topic of the doctoral thesis. Although initially in yeast as a biological model, these lines of research evolved into a study of the metabolism of methylglyoxal and glycation in the parasite Leishmania infantum. A recent interest has been metabolomics based on high resolution mass spectrometry.  

Research Interest

Computational biology Bioinformatics Enzimology