Ana Sofia Rodrigues

Early stage researcher

Ana Sofia Rodrigues received a Ph.D. in Evolutinary Biology from the University of Lisbon in 2016. The major goals of her thesis were to investigate the evolutionary history, the adaptive significance and genetic basis of dorsal color polymorphism of the insect species Philaenus spumatius. Her research interests focused on evolutionary history and adaptive patterns of populations/species. She has published 13 articles, 4 as first author. H-index 6 (Google Scholar). Currently, she is integrated within the project “Transcriptome and metabolome reprogramming in Vitis vinifera cv. Aragonês and Vitis rupestris berries upon infection with Erysiphe necator, GRAPINFECTOMICS” in Fruit Functional Genomics & Biotechnology group (PFG, BIOISI). In the past two years, she worked in the project “PATHOmics: Pathogenomics of coffee leaf rust to probe virulence mechanisms and diagnostic markers“ whose main purpose was to investigate the genetic structure, population dynamics and adaptive patterns of the fungal pathogen Hemileia vastatrix. She also collaborated with researchers from Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences (CATAS), Hainan University, China to understand the patterns of genetic diversity of H. vastatrix populations of China, being involved in the metagenomic analyses. She has also participated in the project “CoffeeRES – Exploring new sources of coffee resistance to leaf rust (Hemileia vastatrix)” on the identification of candidate genes for disease resistance by allocating variant SNPs detected in comparative analyses to gene loci, and retrieving the corresponding gene sequences. During this period, she also worked in other projects, namely, in the project “CajOmics – Towards sustainable production of cashew in Guinea-Bissau”, performing phylogenetic analyses aiming to identify and characterize the fungal pathogen causing cashew dieback in Guinea-Bissau. Finally, she has collaborated in the supervision of graduate students.