Joana Ferreira
joana.s.ferreira@uc.pt | ORCID
Activity:
Joana Ferreira graduated in Biology in 2006 from the University of Coimbra (UC) and completed her PhD in Biosciences, specialty Neurosciences in 2012 at UC, under the co-supervision of Ana Luísa Carvalho at the Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology (CNC, Portugal) and Ann Marie Craig at the Center for Brain Health (University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada). After completing her PhD, she successfully obtained a postdoctoral fellowship to complete her studies on the molecular mechanisms of traffic of glutamate receptors at CNC. In 2016 she joined the group of Laurent Groc, at the Interdisciplinary Institute for Neuroscience (IINS, CNRS, University of Bordeaux, France), to explore the regulation of the nanoscale distribution of NMDA receptors (NMDARs). In 2021 she joined the CNC-UC as an Assistant Investigator, funded by the competitive scientific employment call of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) to start her independent line of research on the nanoscale architecture of the synapse, trans-synaptic signaling and its implications for neurological diseases. In 2024 she joined the Multidisciplinary Institute of Ageing (MIA-PORTUGAL), as the Principal Investigator (PI) of the Synapse Architecture group, to explore the nanoscale synapse architecture in the aging brain as a key mechanism for cognitive performance. She has extensive and recognized experience in molecular imaging of NMDARs and their interactors and a broad background in molecular neuroscience, with specific training in single-molecule localization super-resolution microscopy techniques. She actively participates as a lecturer in several advanced courses from the PhD Program in Experimental Biology and Biomedicine (PDBEB) at UC and as a teacher in the Molecular Biology course from the Master Program of the UC. She is an invited professor of Neurobiology from the Biomedical Sciences Graduation program at the University of Algarve. She is the PI of 2 international, the IBRO Return Home Fellowship and the 2021 Young Investigator Grant from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF), and 1 national grant (FCT), co-PI in a consortium project funded by LaCaixa Foundation Health Research 2020, and has participated in 8 funded research projects, >20 international scientific meetings, 8 of them as an invited speaker. In 2022 she received a Special Recognition in Science from the World Cultural Council (WCC) and the UC and was nominated as a Jeanne Marie Lee Investigator by the BBRF Research Partners Program.
Publications:
Ferreira JS‡, Dupuis JP, Kellermayer B, Bénac N, Manso C, Bouchet D, Levet F, Butler C, Sibarita J-B, and Groc L‡ (2020) Distance-dependent regulation of NMDAR nanoscale organization along hippocampal neuron dendrites. PNAS, Sep 2020, 117 (39) 24526-24533. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1922477117. ‡ Co-corresponding authors.
Kellermayer B*, Ferreira JS*, Dupuis J*, Levet F, Grillo-Bosch D, Bard L, Linarès-Loyez J, Bouchet D, Choquet D, Rusakov DA, Bon P, Sibarita J, Cognet L, Sainlos M, Carvalho AL and Groc L. (2018) Differential Nanoscale Topography and Functional Role of GluN2-NMDA Receptor Subtypes at Glutamatergic Synapses. Neuron 2018 Oct 10; 100(1):106-119.e7. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2018.09.012. * Equal contribution.
Hosokawa T, Liu PW, Cai Q., Ferreira JS, Levet F, Corey Butler, Jean-Baptiste Sibarita, Daniel Choquet, Laurent Groc, Eric Hosy, Mingjie Zhang & Yasunori Hayashi. (2021) CaMKII activation persistently segregates postsynaptic proteins via liquid phase separation. Nature Neuroscience 24, 777–785. DOI: 10.1038/s41593-021-00843-3
Ferreira JS*, Papouin T*, Ladépêche L, Yao A, Langlais VC, Bouchet D, Dulong J, Mothet J, Sacchi S, Pollegioni L, Paoletti P, Oliet SHR and Groc L. (2017) Co-agonists differentially tune GluN2B-NMDA receptor trafficking at hippocampal synapses. eLife 2017;6:e25492. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.25492. * Equal contribution.
Ferreira JS, Schmidt J, Rio P, Águas R, Rooyakkers A, Li KW, Smit AB, Craig AM, Carvalho AL. (2015) GluN2B-Containing NMDA Receptors Regulate AMPA Receptor Traffic through Anchoring of the Synaptic Proteasome. Journal of Neuroscience 35 (22): 8462-8479. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3567-14.2015
Ferreira JS‡, Kellermayer B, Carvalho AL, Groc L‡ (2021) Interplay between NMDA receptor dynamics and the synaptic proteasome. European Journal of Neuroscience 54 (6), 6000 – 6011. DOI: 10.1111/ejn.15427. ‡ Co-corresponding authors.
Paviolo C*, Ferreira JS*, Lee A, Hunter D, Calaresu I, Nandi S, Groc L, Cognet L. (2022) Near-infrared Carbon Nanotube Tracking Reveals the Nanoscale Extracellular Space around Synapses. Nano Letters 2022, 22, 17, 6849–6856. DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c04259. * Equal contribution.
Ferreira, JS‡, Groc, L‡ (2024) Surface Glutamate Receptor Nanoscale Organization with Super-Resolution Microscopy (dSTORM). In: Kukley, M. (eds) New Technologies for Glutamate Interaction. Neuromethods, vol 207. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-3742-5_2. ‡ Co-corresponding authors.
