Undergraduate student at ITQB;
Post graduate student at ISA/ITQB
PhD student at FCL/ITQB;




Assistant professor at Escola Superior Agrária de Santarém

Study of the effect of plant phenolic compounds on the role of the ubiquitin/ proteasome pathway in the neurodegenerative diseases that affect man, and of Parkinson’s disease in particular.


The main areas of research are: biochemical profiling of polyphenols extracted from selected plant sources; screening and selection of the polyphenols for biological activity (antioxidant and cytoprotective activities) in neuronal cell lines; effects on the rotenone-induced neurodegeneration cell model of Parkinson disease through the ubiquitin/proteasome pathway, a proteomic analysis and a transcriptomic analysis.

Santos, C. N. , Ferreira, R. B. , Teixeira, A. R. , (1997), “ Seed proteins of Lupinus mutabilis”, J. Agric. Food Chem., vol. 45, 3821-3825.

Santos, C. N. , Gaspar, M., Caeiro, A. S., Branco-Price, C., Teixeira, A. R. , Ferreira, R. B. , (2006), “Exposure of Lemna minor to arsenite: expression levels of the components and intermediates of the ubiquitin/proteasome pathway” Plant and Cell Physiology, vol. 47, 1262-1273.

Ferreira, R.B., Monteiro, S., Freitas, R., Santos, C.N., Chen, Z., Batista, L.M., Duarte, J., Borges, A. and Teixeira, A.R. (2006) “Fungal pathogens: The battle for plant infection”. Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences, 25 , 505-524.

Ferreira, R.B., Monteiro, S., Freitas, R., Santos, C.N., Chen, Z., Batista, L.M., Duarte, J., Borges, A. and Teixeira, A.R. “The role of plant defence proteins in fungal pathogenesis” (submitted).

Santos, C. N. , Rajasekhar, T.B., C., Teixeira, A. R. , Ferreira, R. B. , “Specific cations are involved in protein packaging inside Lupinus albus seed storage vacuoles” (submitted).

Santos, C. N. , Teixeira, A. R. , Ferreira, R. B. , “The supply of protein substrates for the ubiquitin/proteasome pathway depends upon the redox state of Lemna minor cells” (submitted).

Santos, C. N. , Teixeira, A. R. , Ferreira, R. B. , “Influence of the cell redox state on the response of Lemna minor proteome to arsenite” (in preparation).

Behaviour Pathologies: Biological Approaches,
at Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Fevereiro 2007