EMBO distinguishes i3S students

Eunice Ferreira, a doctoral student in the BioTechHealth program and a researcher in the Bioengineering & Synthetic Microbiology group, was recently awarded a scholarship from the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO).

The "EMBL Advanced Training Center Corporate Partnership Program Fellowship" was awarded to Eunice Ferreira for the work she presented at the synthetic biology workshop - "Creating is Understanding: Synthetic Biology Masters Complexity" - which took place at the end of September in Heidelberg, Germany.

"My research work", Eunice Ferreira details, "consists of genetically manipulating Synechocystis cyanobacteria to produce value-added compounds, including compatible solutes. Synechocystis is a model organism and a promising low-cost cell factory because it uses sunlight as its energy source and CO2 as its carbon source, so it has very simple nutritional requirements".

Eunice Ferreira, who is developing her research work in the group Bioengineering and Synthetic Microbiology, led by Paula Tamagnini, said: "Based on the molecular tools developed and characterized by our group, and on knowledge of the biosynthetic pathways of compounds of interest, we built different synthetic modules that we introduced into cyanobacteria".

The aim of this paper, the i3S researcher reveals, is to "effectively produce such value-added compounds, which, because of their protective and stabilizing properties, are of great commercial interest to the cosmetics, biomedical, and food industries".

Having received an EMBO grant means to the researcher "a recognition of the work we have been doing in applying synthetic biology tools to such a challenging organism as cyanobacteria".