Mariana GALVAO FERRARINI

Short resume

I am a computational biologist with solid background in microbiology and molecular biology. My main area of research (past and present) is to understand the interactions between living organisms in biological communities or systems. Such interactions can take place for instance between a host and an endosymbiont or a pathogen, between two symbiotic organisms or even between two species that do not depend on each other, but rather coexist in the same environment. I believe that these organisms do communicate in all cases and this communication might be related or not to the control of one over the other. In any case, their interaction is based on biological molecules such as metabolites, small RNAs, proteins and so on. In order to detect and predict such interactions from big data (sequencing of RNA or small RNA, detecting proteins or even predicting the metabolism based mostly on the genome sequence) I use and develop tools for computational biology and mathematical modeling. I joined the BF2I team to understand the dialog between the rice weevil and its bacterial endosymbiont, which is essential for the insect's development. In the future I also would like to broaden my research into the populational and ecological levels by modeling and analyzing the way such interactions influence, and are or can be influenced by the ecosystem of which they are a part of.
I am experienced in bioinformatics with focus on metabolism, transcriptomic analyses, small RNA analyses and regulation of gene expression. I also have hands-on experience in microbiology, cellular and molecular biology, histology, neurobiology and microscopy.