Patrícia Abrantes

Patrícia Abrantes is a research assistant at Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (IHMT) and at Global Health and Tropical Medicine Center (GHTM) of Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (UNL). She holds a PhD in Biomedical Sciences by the Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (2007) and a BSc in Biology (2000) by the Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon.

At GHTM/IHMT NOVA, she is the Coordinator of the Bioinformatics infrastructure  – BIOHUB, supporting the analysis of whole genome sequencing data produced by the existing MinION sequencing platform and managing the existing high computational capacity of GHTM (Linux server), providing guidelines and supervision to users, equipment maintenance and training.

She teaches “Biostatistics” and “Bioinformatics” in several Master and Doctoral Programs at IHMT. She organized and teached short courses related to bioinformatics: “Crash course: Using the command line”, and antimicrobial resistance: “Summer School on antimicrobial resistance 2022″ and “2nd Summer School on antimicrobial and biocide resistance”. 

Her scientific activity has been mainly devoted to the identification of human susceptibility genes for different pathologies as well as to host-parasite interaction studies. For that, she has been applying bioinformatic and statistical tools for NGS data analysis, environment and host-microbiome interactions and identification of genetic risk factors associated with human diseases.

1. Medeiros MM, Ingham AC, Nanque LM, Correia C, Stegger M, Andersen PS, Fisker AB, Benn CS, Lanaspa M, Silveira H, & Abrantes P. (2022). Oral polio revaccination is associated with changes in gut and upper respiratory microbiomes of infants. Frontiers in Microbiology, 13:1016220. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2022.1016220
2. Ferreira C*, Abrantes P*, Costa SS, Viveiros M, Couto I. (2022). Occurrence and Variability of the Efflux Pump Gene norA across the Staphylococcus Genus. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 23, 15306. (*equal contribution). https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms232315306  
3. Dias S, Gama A*, Abrantes P*, Gomes I, Fonseca M, Reigado V, Simões D, Carreiras E, Mora C, Ferreira AP, Akpogheneta O, Martins MO. (2020). Patterns of Sexual Risk Behavior, HIV Infection, and Use of Health Services Among Sub-Saharan African Migrants in Portugal. The Journal of Sex Research, 57(7):906-913. (*equal contribution). doi: 10.1080/00224499.2019.1601154
4. Abrantes P, Rosa A, Francisco V, Sousa I, Xavier JM, Oliveira SA. (2016). Mitochondrial genome association study with peripheral arterial disease and venous thromboembolism. Atherosclerosis, 252:97-105. doi: 10.1016/j.atherosclerosis.2016.07.920.
5. Abrantes P, Santos MM, Sousa I, Xavier JM, Francisco V, Krug T, Sobral J, Matos M, Martins M, Jacinto A, Coiteiro D, Oliveira SA. (2015). Genetic variants underlying risk of intracranial aneurysms: Insights from a GWAS in Portuguese. PLoS ONE 10(7): e0133422. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0133422.