Where Ideas Grow
Sandra Ribeiro
Group leader
Sandra de Macedo Ribeiro has a background in Structural Biology, holds a degree in Biochemistry from the University of Porto (Portugal) and a Ph.D. from the Technical University of Munich Germany. Her training in Protein Crystallography started in 1992 as an Erasmus student at the University of Aarhus (Denmark) and proceeded during her Ph.D research at the Max-Planck Institut fuer Biochemie, Martinsried, Germany. In 2001-2002, following a post-Doctoral fellowship at IBMC-CSIC (Barcelona, Spain), Sandra moved to the University of Algarve (Portugal) as a Biochemistry Professor and later to the Center of Neuroscience and Cell Biology (Coimbra, Portugal) where she lead the Protein Structure Group. In 2006, Sandra joined the Institute for Molecular and Cellular Biology (Porto, Portugal), where she leads the Protein Crystallography Group. Research in Sandra Macedo Ribeiro lab focuses on the structural and functional characterization of biomedically relevant proteins, with a special emphasis on understanding the modulatory role of intermolecular interactions on proteins associated with neurodegenerative diseases.

Selected Publications

Sárkány Z., Rocha F., Bratek-Skicki A., Tompa P., Macedo-Ribeiro S., Martins P.M.,
Quantification of Surface Tension Effects and Nucleation-and-Growth Rates during Self-Assembly of Biological Condensates. Advanced Science10(23):, 2023. [Journal: Article] [IF: 15,1 (*)]
DOI: 10.1002/advs.202301501 SCOPUS: 85160939519.


Barbosa Pereira P.J., Manso J.A., Macedo-Ribeiro S.,
The structural plasticity of polyglutamine repeats. Current Opinion in Structural Biology80:, 2023. [Journal: Review] [CI: 1] [IF: 6,8 (*)]
DOI: 10.1016/j.sbi.2023.102607 SCOPUS: 85159144967.


Figueiredo F., Lopes-Marques M., Almeida B., Matscheko N., Martins P.M., Silva A., Macedo-Ribeiro S.,
A Robust Assay to Monitor Ataxin-3 Amyloid Fibril Assembly. Cells11(12):, 2022. [Journal: Article] [CI: 2] [IF: 6]
DOI: 10.3390/cells11121969 SCOPUS: 85132274040.


Pintado-Grima C., Bárcenas O., Manglano-Artuñedo Z., Vilaça R., Macedo-Ribeiro S., Pallarès I., Santos J., Ventura S.,
CARs-DB: A Database of Cryptic Amyloidogenic Regions in Intrinsically Disordered Proteins. Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences9:, 2022. [Journal: Article] [CI: 4] [IF: 5]
DOI: 10.3389/fmolb.2022.882160 SCOPUS: 85134701519.


Quaglia F., Meszáros B., Salladini E., Hatos A., Pancsa R., Chemes L.B., Pajkos M., Lazar T., Peña-Díaz S., Santos J., Ács V., Farahi N., Fichó E., Aspromonte M.C., Bassot C., Chasapi A., Davey N.E., Davidovic R., Dobson L., Elofsson A., Erdos G., Gaudet P., Giglio M., Glavina J., Iserte J., Iglesias V., Kálmán Z., Lambrughi M., Leonardi E., Longhi S., Macedo-Ribeiro S., Maiani E., Marchetti J., Marino-Buslje C., Meszáros A., Monzon A.M., Minervini G., Nadendla S., Nilsson J.F., Novotný M., Ouzounis C.A., Palopoli N., Papaleo E., Pereira P.J.B., Pozzati G., Promponas V.J., Pujols J., Rocha A.C.S., Salas M., Sawicki L.R., Schad E., Shenoy A., Szaniszló T., Tsirigos K.D., Veljkovic N., Parisi G., Ventura S., Dosztányi Z., Tompa P., Tosatto S.C.E., Piovesan D.,
DisProt in 2022: Improved quality and accessibility of protein intrinsic disorder annotation. Nucleic Acids Research50(D1):D480-D487, 2022. [Journal: Article] [CI: 86] [IF: 14,9]
DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkab1082 SCOPUS: 85125157608.


Merski M., Macedo-Ribeiro S., Wieczorek R.M., Górna M.W.,
The Repeating, Modular Architecture of the HtrA Proteases. Biomolecules12(6):, 2022. [Journal: Article] [CI: 1] [IF: 5,5]
DOI: 10.3390/biom12060793 SCOPUS: 85131331885.


Necci M., Piovesan D., Hoque M.T., Walsh I., Iqbal S., Vendruscolo M., Sormanni P., Wang C., Raimondi D., Sharma R., Zhou Y., Litfin T., Galzitskaya O.V., Lobanov M.Y., Vranken W., Wallner B., Mirabello C., Malhis N., Dosztányi Z., Erdos G., Mészáros B., Gao J., Wang K., Hu G., Wu Z., Sharma A., Hanson J., Paliwal K., Callebaut I., Bitard-Feildel T., Orlando G., Peng Z., Xu J., Wang S., Jones D.T., Cozzetto D., Meng F., Yan J., Gsponer J., Cheng J., Wu T., Kurgan L., Promponas V.J., Tamana S., Marino-Buslje C., Martínez-Pérez E., Chasapi A., Ouzounis C., Dunker A.K., Kajava A.V., Leclercq J.Y., Aykac-Fas B., Lambrughi M., Maiani E., Papaleo E., Chemes L.B., Álvarez L., González-Foutel N.S., Iglesias V., Pujols J., Ventura S., Palopoli N., Benítez G.I., Parisi G., Bassot C., Elofsson A., Govindarajan S., Lamb J., Salvatore M., Hatos A., Monzon A.M., Bevilacqua M., Micetic I., Minervini G., Paladin L., Quaglia F., Leonardi E., Davey N., Horvath T., Kovacs O.P., Murvai N., Pancsa R., Schad E., Szabo B., Tantos A., Macedo-Ribeiro S., Manso J.A., Pereira P.J.B., Davidovic R., Veljkovic N., Hajdu-Soltész B., Pajkos M., Szaniszló T., Guharoy M., Lazar T., Macossay-Castillo M., Tompa P., Tosatto S.C.E.,
Critical assessment of protein intrinsic disorder prediction. Nature Methods18(5):472-481, 2021. [Journal: Article] [CI: 142] [IF: 48]
DOI: 10.1038/s41592-021-01117-3 SCOPUS: 85104988931.


Martins P.M., Navarro S., Silva A., Pinto M.F., Sárkány Z., Figueiredo F., Pereira P.J.B., Pinheiro F., Bednarikova Z., Burdukiewicz M., Galzitskaya O.V., Gazova Z., Gomes C.M., Pastore A., Serpell L.C., Skrabana R., Smirnovas V., Ziaunys M., Otzen D.E., Ventura S., Macedo-Ribeiro S.,
MIRRAGGE – Minimum Information Required for Reproducible AGGregation Experiments. Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience13:, 2020. [Journal: Review] [CI: 15] [IF: 5,6]
DOI: 10.3389/fnmol.2020.582488 SCOPUS: 85097652573.


Fraga J.S., Sárkány Z., Silva A., Correia I., Pereira P.J.B., Macedo-Ribeiro S.,
Genetic code ambiguity modulates the activity of a C. albicans MAP kinase linked to cell wall remodeling. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta - Proteins and Proteomics1867(6):654-661, 2019. [Journal: Article] [CI: 4] [IF: 2,4]
DOI: 10.1016/j.bbapap.2019.02.004 SCOPUS: 85062145242.


Silva A., Almeida B., Fraga J.S., Taboada P., Martins P.M., Macedo-Ribeiro S.,
Distribution of Amyloid-Like and Oligomeric Species from Protein Aggregation Kinetics. Angewandte Chemie - International Edition56(45):14042-14045, 2017. [Journal: Article] [CI: 11] [IF: 12,1]
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201707345 SCOPUS: 85032264546.


Merski M., Moreira C., Abreu R.M.V., Ramos M.J., Fernandes P.A., Martins L.M., Pereira P.J.B., Macedo-Ribeiro S.,
Molecular motion regulates the activity of the mitochondrial serine protease HtrA2. Cell Death and Disease8(10):, 2017. [Journal: Article] [CI: 14] [IF: 5,6]
DOI: 10.1038/cddis.2017.487 SCOPUS: 85031277139.