IGC and ITQB researchers awarded SymbNET Research Grants

Researchers from the Instituto Gulbenkian Ciência (FCG-IGC) and Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica António Xavier (ITQB NOVA), have recently been awarded 4.000€ each in the second edition of the SymbNET Research Grants.

This funding aims to promote the use of new technologies and approaches in Metabolomics, Genomics and Proteomics and the interaction of FCG-IGC and ITQB-NOVA researchers with the SymbNET partner institutions (CAU, UNIL, EMBL). The purpose is for the researchers to use and identify techniques to be imported to IGC and ITQB-NOVA facilities or to be used in the long-term as an external service in partner institutions or collaborations.

The ITQB NOVA researcher, Ana Gonçalves, from the Proteome Regulation in Plants group will collaborate with the Proteomics core facility at the EMBL. In Ana’s words “I am proud to be awarded the SymbNET research grant, which allows scientists of various fields to collaborate and exchange knowledge. The phosphopeptide enrichment technique will be essential for my research, focused on a rice kinase controlling plant development and defense, to decipher its target proteins under different Pi regimes and AMS (arbuscular mycorrhiza symbiosis) establishment. The goal is to create knowledge to improve rice Pi homeostasis grown under  non-flooded conditions.” The researcher adds  that “the new established methodology will be shared with all SymbNET community and made available as a service at UniMS.”

Abdul M. Shafi, a PhD student at the FCG-IGC will team up with the UNIL Metabolomics Unit. According to Carlos Penha Gonçalves, Shafi’s supervisor, “this grant will allow us to determine the role of metabolic shifts in activation of brain endothelial cells, a crucial process in the development of cerebral malaria, a deadly disease affecting mainly children in Africa.”

The third edition of the SymbNET Research Grants will open in August 2022. More information available here.