Sofia Seabra

Sofia G. Seabra completed a PhD in Biology (Evolutionary Biology) from the Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon (FCUL) in 2007. Since April 2020 she has an institutional CEEC contract (https://doi.org/10.54499/CEECINST/00102/2018/CP1567/CT0040) as Assistant Researcher at the Global Public Health Teaching and Research Unit of Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine at NOVA University of Lisbon (IHMT-NOVA).

She was Principal Investigator in the internally GHTM funded project ‘WasteWaterVir – Integrating metavirome analysis of wastewaters into tools for surveillance of infectious diseases’ and is a team member in the ongoing We’Search program (FCG/La Caixa) funded project “Airway colonization and microbiome in relation to asthma and atopy in children from Cabo Verde- RESPIRA-CV”, in the ongoing FCT project “Minimizing the emergence and dissemination of HIV-1 drug resistance in PALOPs through an evidence-based portable high-throughput sequencing and computational approach” and on the Horizon European Project “EuCARE: European Cohorts of Patients and Schools to Advance Response to Epidemics”.

She supervised several post-graduate students and participated in evaluation committees in PhD and Master theses. She teaches Biostatistics in the IHMT Doctoral Programs ‘International Health’, Molecular Epidemiology in the NOVA Masters ‘Computational Biology and Bioinformatics’. She organizes and teaches short courses related to bioinformatics: “Crash course: Using the command line” and “Python Applied to the Biomedical Sciences”. She is a member of the IHMT-NOVA Council since December 2022, a member of the Scientific Committee of the Doctoral Program on International Health since 2022 and of the Scientific Committee of the biobank Biotropical Resources (BIOTROP) of GHTM-IHMT-NOVA since 2024.

I apply my background on genomics and bioinformatics to research on public health issues:

• Viral detection and sequencing from wastewater samples to contribute to the wastewater-based surveillance of emerging diseases.  
• Microbiome genetic characterization to understand patterns of diversity and differentiation of: insect vectors’ gut microbiome; human respiratory microbiome. 
• Zika virus’ genome-wide diversity and phylodynamics, to identify genomic footprints of differentiation patterns and to propose a dynamic classification system that reflects its divergence levels. 

I also contribute to data management and statistical data analysis in several projects:

• SARS-CoV2 serological screening in a large-scale municipal survey in Cascais, Lisbon Metropolitan area. 
• Pilot phase of the POLEN Research data Repository (FCT-FCCN).

1. Marques J, Seabra SG, Almeida I, Gomes J, Alves AC & Silveira H (2024). Long-term blood-free rearing of Anopheles mosquitoes with no effect on fitness, Plasmodium infectivity nor microbiota composition. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 19473. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-70090-6 
2. Pimentel V, Pingarilho M, Sebastião CS, Miranda M, Gonçalves F, Cabanas J, Costa I, Diogo I, Fernandes S, Costa O, Corte-Real R, Martins MRO, Seabra SG, Abecasis AB & Gomes P (2024). Applying Next-Generation Sequencing to Track HIV-1 Drug Resistance Mutations Circulating in Portugal. Viruses, 16(4), 622. https://doi.org/10.3390/v16040622 
3. Seabra SG, Merca F, Pereira B, Fonseca I, Carvalho AC, Brito V, Alves D, Libin P, Martins MRO, Miranda MNS, Pingarilho M, Pimentel V & Abecasis AB (2024). Serological screening in a large-scale municipal survey in Cascais, Portugal, during the first waves of the COVID-19 pandemic: Lessons for future pandemic preparedness efforts. Frontiers in Public Health, 12, 1326125. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2024.1326125 
4. Seabra SG, Libin PJK, Theys K, Zhukova A, Potter BI, Nebenzahl-Guimaraes H, Gorbalenya AE, Sidorov IA, Pimentel V, Pingarilho M, Vasconcelos ATR, Dellicour S, Khouri R, Gascuel O, Vandamme A-M, Baele G, Cuypers L, Abecasis AB (2022). Genome-wide diversity of Zika virus: Exploring spatio-temporal dynamics to guide a new nomenclature proposal. Virus Evolution, 8, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1093/ve/veac029 
5. Seabra SG, Fragata I, Antunes MA, Faria GS, Santos MA, Sousa VC, Simões P & Matos M. (2018). Different genomic changes underlie adaptive evolution in populations of contrasting history. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 35, 549–563. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msx247