Tiago Dantas

UnIGENe

Associate Researcher

Tiago Dantas started his scientific career in 2007 as an Erasmus student investigating centrosome biology in the lab of Prof. Ciaran Morrison at the National University of Ireland in Galway. Tiago was then awarded a fellowship from FCT to continue his work in Prof. Morrison’s lab as a PhD student. His dissertation focused on the crosstalk between centrosomal proteins and the DNA damage response.

After receiving his PhD in 2012, Tiago joined the lab of Prof. Richard Vallee at Columbia University in New York, where he was funded by the AHA/ASA to study the importance of ciliogenesis and molecular motors in neural stem cell proliferation. In addition, he studied the involvement of Dyneins in human disease.

In 2018, Tiago joined IBMC/i3S to start his own line of research, focusing on the poorly characterized form of Dynein, known as Dynein-2, which is essential for retrograde intraflagellar transport inside cilia and many cell signaling pathways. His team is also interested in understanding the ciliary-dependent signaling mechanisms that regulate cell cycle progression and proliferation of neural stem cells during brain development.

Research Team:

- Carla Manuela Castro Abreu, PhD (Associate Researcher)

- Diogo Rodrigues, MSc (PhD student)

- Ana Rita De-Castro, MSc (PhD student)

- Tiago Xavier Ribeiro, MSc (PhD student)

- Vanessa Teixeira, (Co-supervised PhD student from the Gassmann Lab)

- Célia Azevedo Soares, MD, PhD (Clinical Genetics and Neurodevelopment expert)

- Maria João De-Castro, BSc, MSc (PhD student)

- Francisco Santos, BSc, MSc (PhD student from the Roberts Lab)

- Luísa Fonseca, BSc (Master Student)

- Francisca Bryant-Jorge Dias BSc (Master Student)

- Maria João Monteiro, BSc (Master Student)

Alumni Team members:

- Carmen Vieira, BSc, MSc (Master project 2018-2019)

- Telma Oliveira BSc (Bachelor Student - Final year project - 2018)

- Marcos Machado, BSc (Visiting Student 2020)

- José Bernardo Gama, PhD (Postdoc 2019-2020)

- Joana Gonçalves, BSc (Visiting Student 2020-2021)

- Mariana Sousa, BSc (Summer Student 2022)

- Maria Francisca Sousa (Bachelor Student - Final year project 2023)

Current Funding:

FCT projects: 2022.01955.PTDC and 2022.01964.PTDC

Individual positions funded: CEECIND/00771/2017 (six-year contract) to T.D., CEECIND/01985/2018 (six-year contract) to C.A., SFRH/BD/143985/2019 to D.R., 2021.04761.BD to T.R., UI/BD/152865/2022 to A.C., BIIverao/i3S/18072207/2022 to M.S and 2023.01378.BD to MJC.

Past Funding:

FCT project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-029471

In 2018, TD was also supported by the Porto Neurosciences and Neurologic Disease Research Initiative at I3S (Norte-01-0145-FEDER-000008)

Additional roles:

Since 2018, TD is an Editorial Board member of the Communications Biology Journal (Nature Publishing Group): https://www.nature.com/commsbio/about/editorial-board#Dantas

TD edited and organized the “Centrosomes and Cilia” collection, which is now online at Communications Biology: https://www.nature.com/collections/iadheaabic

Since 2020, TD is an Editorial Board Member of the journal Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience

Since 2018, TD is an Invited Professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto, where he teaches the Neurodevelopment class in the Neurobiology Masters Degree

Selected as an expert by the EU Commission to evaluate Marie S. Curie Actions (Postdoctoral fellowship applications) in 2021 and 2022

Examiner/evaluating member of the Jury in the defense of 6 Master and 2 PhD theses

Selected Publications

Gonçalves-Santos F., De-Castro M.J.G., De-Castro A.R.G., Dantas T.J.,

Building train carriages for ciliary transport: (IFT-)A complex task. Communications Biology6(1):, 2023. [Journal: Article] [IF: 5,9 (*)]
DOI: 10.1038/s42003-023-04426-9 SCOPUS: 85146818655.

De-Castro A.R.G., Rodrigues D.R.M., De-Castro M.J.G., Vieira N., Vieira C., Carvalho A.X., Gassmann R., Abreu C.M.C., Dantas T.J.,

WDR60-mediated dynein-2 loading into cilia powers retrograde IFT and transition zone crossing. Journal of Cell Biology221(1):, 2021. [Journal: Article] [CI: 12] [IF: 8,1]
DOI: 10.1083/jcb.202010178 SCOPUS: 85123025569.

Abreu C.M.C., Dantas T.J.,

Coping with centriole loss: pericentriolar material maintenance after centriole degeneration. Communications Biology4(1):, 2021. [Journal: Article] [IF: 6,5]
DOI: 10.1038/s42003-021-02243-6 SCOPUS: 85107421637.

Dantas T.J.,

Centrosomes and cilia: always at the center of the action. Communications Biology3(1):, 2020. [Journal: Editorial] [CI: 2] [IF: 6.3]
DOI: 10.1038/s42003-020-01519-7 SCOPUS: 85098475975.

Khobrekar N.V., Quintremil S., Dantas T.J., Vallee R.B.,

The Dynein Adaptor RILP Controls Neuronal Autophagosome Biogenesis, Transport, and Clearance. Developmental Cell53(2):141-153.e4, 2020. [Journal: Article] [CI: 30] [IF: 12,3]
DOI: 10.1016/j.devcel.2020.03.011 SCOPUS: 85083116287.

Gonçalves J.C., Dantas T.J., Vallee R.B.,

Distinct roles for dynein light intermediate chains in neurogenesis, migration, and terminal somal translocation. Journal of Cell Biology218(3):808-819, 2019. [Journal: Article] [CI: 15] [IF: 8,8]
DOI: 10.1083/jcb.201806112 SCOPUS: 85062391953.

Doobin D.J., Kemal S., Dantas T.J., Vallee R.B.,

Severe NDE1-mediated microcephaly results from neural progenitor cell cycle arrests at multiple specific stages. Nature Communications7:, 2016. [Journal: Article] [CI: 46] [IF: 12,1]
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12551 SCOPUS: 84984636132.

Doobin D.J., Dantas T.J., Vallee R.B.,

Microcephaly as a cell cycle disease. Cell Cycle16(3):247-248, 2017. [Journal: Note] [CI: 7] [IF: 3,3]
DOI: 10.1080/15384101.2016.1252591 SCOPUS: 84995519777.

Dantas T.J., Carabalona A., Hu D.J.K., Vallee R.B.,

Emerging roles for motor proteins in progenitor cell behavior and neuronal migration during brain development. Cytoskeleton73(10):566-576, 2016. [Journal: Review] [CI: 11] [IF: 2,2]
DOI: 10.1002/cm.21293 SCOPUS: 84962588361.

Baffet A.D., Carabalona A., Dantas T.J., Doobin D.D., Hu D.J., Vallee R.B.,

Cellular and subcellular imaging of motor protein-based behavior in embryonic rat brain. Methods in Cell Biology131:349-363, 2016. [Book Series: Article] [CI: 14] [IF: 1,3]
DOI: 10.1016/bs.mcb.2015.06.013 SCOPUS: 84940676248.

Taylor S.P., Dantas T.J., Duran I., Wu S., Lachman R.S., Nelson S.F., Cohn D.H., Vallee R.B., Krakow D., Bamshad M.J., Shendure J., Nickerson D.A.,

Mutations in DYNC2LI1 disrupt cilia function and cause short rib polydactyly syndrome. Nature Communications6:, 2015. [Journal: Article] [CI: 61] [IF: 11,3]
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms8092 SCOPUS: 84935907084.

Daly O.M., Gaboriau D., Karakaya K., King S., Dantas T.J., Lalor P., Dockery P., Krämer A., Morrison C.G.,

CEP164-null cells generated by genome editing show a ciliation defect with intact DNA repair capacity. Journal of Cell Science129(9):1769-1774, 2016. [Journal: Article] [CI: 24] [IF: 4,4]
DOI: 10.1242/jcs.186221 SCOPUS: 84968735321.

Conroy P.C., Saladino C., Dantas T.J., Lalor P., Dockery P., Morrison C.G.,

C-NAP1 and rootletin restrain DNA damage-induced centriole splitting and facilitate ciliogenesis. Cell Cycle11(20):3769-3778, 2012. [Journal: Article] [CI: 35] [IF: 5,2]
DOI: 10.4161/cc.21986 SCOPUS: 84868020395.

Dantas T.J., Daly O.M., Conroy P.C., Tomas M., Wang Y., Lalor P., Dockery P., Ferrando-May E., Morrison C.G.,

Calcium-Binding Capacity of Centrin2 Is Required for Linear POC5 Assembly but Not for Nucleotide Excision Repair. PLoS ONE8(7):, 2013. [Journal: Article] [CI: 24] [IF: 3,5]
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0068487 SCOPUS: 84879770210.

Wang Y., Dantas T.J., Lalor P., Dockery P., Morrison C.G.,

Promoter hijack reveals pericentrin functions in mitosis and the DNA damage response. Cell Cycle12(4):635-646, 2013. [Journal: Article] [CI: 14] [IF: 5]
DOI: 10.4161/cc.23516 SCOPUS: 84874594469.

Dantas T.J., Wang Y., Lalor P., Dockery P., Morrison C.G.,

Defective nucleotide excision repair with normal centrosome structures and functions in the absence of all vertebrate centrins. Journal of Cell Biology193(2):307-318, 2011. [Journal: Article] [CI: 45] [IF: 10,3]
DOI: 10.1083/jcb.201012093 SCOPUS: 79955516456.

de Carvalho A.L.R.T., Strikoudis A., Liu H.Y., Chen Y.W., Dantas T.J., Vallee R.B., Correia-Pinto J., Snoeck H.W.,

Glycogen synthase kinase 3 induces multilineage maturation of human pluripotent stem cell-derived lung progenitors in 3D culture. Development146(2):, 2019. [Journal: Article] [CI: 31] [IF: 5,6]
DOI: 10.1242/dev.171652 SCOPUS: 85060395959.