Biography

Dr Inês Castro is an Assistant Professor in Biology and the Associate Director for Global Experience within the CoMEMS faculty.

Inês obtaining her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Portugal, after which she moved to the UK to study Cell Biology for her PhD at the University of Exeter. She continued her research in Organelle Biology as a Postdoc at the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Inês joined Northeastern University London in 2022 to establish the Biology courses offered to Mobility students.

Qualifications

PhD in Biosciences, University of Exeter (2016)
MSc in Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of Coimbra (2011)
BSc in Applied Biology, University of Minho (2009)

Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) 2023

Research

Inês’ research has been focused on understanding organelle function and interactions in several model organisms.

As a PhD student, she studied peroxisomes, an essential cellular organelle involved in the beta-oxidation of fatty acids and the metabolism of reactive oxygen species. Using both in silico and in vivo techniques she was able to characterize the properties of tail-anchored proteins involved in targeting peroxisomes in mammalian cells. Furthermore, she focused on characterizing three of these proteins, identifying one of the first molecular links between peroxisomes and kinesin motors in mammalian cells, and the first ER-peroxisome contact site in mammalian cells.

As a Postdoctoral fellow, she focused on the identification and characterization of contact site proteins in yeast. Taking advantage of high throughput techniques and fluorescence microscopy, she was able to identify over 100 potential contact site proteins across several different contact sites, and characterized proteins involved in lipid transport and metabolism.

Selected publications

Castro IG et al. (2022) Systematic analysis of membrane contact sites in Saccharomyces cerevisiae uncovers modulators of cellular lipid distribution. eLife 11, e74602. doi: 10.7554/eLife.74602

Bisinski DD, Castro IG et al. (2022) Cvm1 is a component of multiple vacuolar contact sites required for sphingolipid homeostasis. J Cell Biol 221 (8): e202103048. doi: 10.1083/jcb.202103048

Castro IG et al. (2019) Promethin is a conserved seipin partner protein. Cells 8 (3), 268. doi: 10.3390/cells8030268

Castro IG, Richards DM, Metz J, Costello JL, Passmore JB, Schrader TA, Gouveia A, Ribeiro D and Schrader M. (2018) A role for MIRO1 in motility and membrane dynamics of peroxisomes. Traffic 19 (3), 229-242. doi: 10.1111/tra.12549

Full publication list

ORCID

Google Scholar