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PhD. Researcher Email: rloureiro@qui.uc.pt |
Rui João Loureiro is currently a junior researcher at Coimbra Chemistry Center. Rui João graduated in Biomedical Sciences – Minor in Molecular Biomedicine (University of Aveiro) in 2010. He initiated his work as a researcher during the master degree in Molecular Biomedicine (University of Aveiro), where he carried an epidemiological survey of the bacterial resistances to antibiotics in the local hospital under the supervision of Prof. Teresa Herdeiro and Prof. Elmano Ramalheira. After completing his master degree, Rui João undergone a research internship in the group of Prof. Francisco Tejedor Rescalvo (Institute of Neurosciences of Alicante, Spain) where he used bioinformatics methods to predict the determinants of substrate specificity of MNB/DYRK1A enzyme. Rui João then enrolled in the BioSys PhD Programme (University of Lisbon) where he joined the group of Prof. Patrícia Faísca with the co-supervision of Prof. Eugene Shakhnovich (Harvard University, USA) and worked on the characterization of the early phase of aggregation of β2 microglobulin in amyloid disease using molecular simulations (i.e. protein-protein docking and molecular dynamics). He have developed and optimized a new version of the Monte Carlo ensemble docking (MC-ED) method, a protein-protein docking algorithm, and used it to predict and characterize the structures and association interfaces of early oligomers (i.e. dimers and tetramers) on the β2 microglobulin aggregation pathway and key molecular events driving this process.
Currently, Rui João Loureiro’s main research interests are:
• Protein structure, stability and interactions and its relationship with physiology and disease;
• Protein-Protein interactions and their role on viral infection and other physiological and pathological processes;
• Characterization of the stability and dynamics of influenza virus NS1 protein interactions with host proteins.