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Português do Brasil
EspañolLuisa D. Rona Pitaluga
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Rona Pitaluga Lab |
BSc from the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Master and Doctorate in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Post-doctorate in bioinformatics at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, and at Imperial College London England. Associate Professor at the Department of Cell Biology, Embryology, and Genetics at UFSC, permanent professor at PPGBCD since 2019, and collaborating professor at PPGBQA since 2023.
“Her research focuses mainly on the cryptic diversity of malaria vectors in the Atlantic Forest and the development of Point-of-Care molecular diagnostics for detecting viruses, parasites, and sentinel species. For this, she uses a complete set of tools, including genomics and population genetics, molecular evolution, bioinformatics and molecular biology.”
Ongoing projects:
a) Cryptic speciation in malaria vectors from the Brazilian Atlantic Forest using genomic data;
b) Development of Point-of-Care molecular assays for diagnosing viruses, parasites, and sentinel species as biomarkers.
Main Publications:
- Unravelling population structure heterogeneity within the genome of the malaria vector Anopheles gambiae. BMC Genomics. 2021, 22(1):422. doi: 10.1186/s12864-021-07722-y.
- Plasmodium simium: Population Genomics Reveals the Origin of a Reverse Zoonosis. J Infect Dis. 2021,224(11):1950-1961. doi: 10.1093/infdis/jiab214.
- PIMMS43 is required for malaria parasite immune evasion and sporogonic development in the mosquito vector.Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2020,117(13):7363-7373. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1919709117.
- Cryptic diversity in an Atlantic Forest malaria vector from the mountains of South-East Brazil. Parasit Vectors. 2018,11(1):36. doi: 10.1186/s13071-018-2615-0.
