My name is Margarida Ruivo and I come from a small town in Portugal called Portalegre. I graduated in Cell and Molecular Biology from the Nova University of Lisbon in 2016. My degree internship took place at the Laboratory of Cell Surfaces and Bacterial Pathogenesis at the ITQB-NOVA, where I learned and applied molecular biology and microbiology techniques.
After this experience I developed a great interest in these areas, therefore I proceed to obtain my master´s degree in Applied Microbiology at the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Lisbon where I had the opportunity to broaden my scientific background and my practical skills. After my thesis, in February 2019, I worked in a water treatment company Enkrott, SA where I got experience in private sector activities. I took conscious that I would rather learn and understand scientific problems and, ultimately, find new ways of solving them. For these reasons, in November of 2019, I joined the Microbial and Enzyme Technology (MET) laboratory where I was involved in the implementation of rational and semi-rational engineering strategies with the goal of improving the activity and thermostability of a new isoeugenol monooxygenase, that converts in one step, isoeugenol, a cheap product of lignin depolymerization into vanillin. In particular, I have optimized miniaturized pipeline protocols to construct libraries of 100-200 mutants, covering the entire workflow from primer design, through mutagenesis, protein production, purification and characterization. This fellowship allowed me to continue developing molecular biology and microbiology competencies and to get further experience in biochemistry and enzymology approaches.
In August of 2021, I moved to Vienna and I joined the Ticks and Tick-borne pathogens group as a Chemical Technician assistant in the project “Immune responses to meat allergens”. While working on the project, we developed another small project focused on the restriction-modification system of Borrelia, where we identified and characterized the RMS genes in Borrelia afzelii and Borrelia garinii. In September of 2022, I started as a PhD student in the same group focusing my work on Borrerial Immune system and its survival strategies.
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