Skip to main content

Agenda IB

Paulo Mazzafera

Paulo Mazzafera graduated in Agronomy (1982) and obtained his Ph.D. at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp, Brazil), where he holds a Full Professorship position in Plant Physiology. Crop productivity and secondary metabolism are the focus of his research, mainly on coffee, sugarcane, and eucalyptus. He also investigates the responses of plants to low P and how plants positively respond to biostimulant molecules, with a particular interest in root growth and P acquisition. Mazzafera has published over 200 papers and has been the editor of several journals. He is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Science of São Paulo Academy of Sciences.

Thomas Michael Lewinsohn

Insect-plant interactions
Community ecology
Spatial, functional and structural organization of biodiversity
History of ecology

Marcelo Alves da Silva Mori

The main purpose of our lab is to identify and characterize molecular mechanisms involved in the aging process and in response to dietary interventions. We pay particular interest to understand how metabolism contributes to the genesis of age-related diseases like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and neurodegenerative diseases. We focus on the fat tissue - an important site of metabolic integration in multicellular organisms - and ask ourselves how this tissue responds to changes in energy balance and signals to other tissues to inform them about these changes. If not adjusted, this mechanism leads to several chronic diseases, especially in middle aged and elderly individuals. We identified that this control is at least in part exerted by changes in microRNA biogenesis in adipose tissue. When regulated, this process affects animal susceptibility to oxidative stress and influences lifespan.