Joana graduated in Cell and Molecular Biology at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal, in 2011. She completed an MSc in Neuroscience at King's College London in 2012. During this period, she developed a research project under the supervision of Dr Ruth Pidsley and Prof Jonathan Mill. The primary aim of her project was to access global methylation differences in post-mortem brain samples from schizophrenia patients and controls. From September of 2012 and January 2013 Joana worked as a research technician with the Psychiatric Epigenetics Group at King's College London. She is currently undertaking her PhD under the supervision of Prof Jonathan Mill. Her project consists in modelling epigenetic responses to schizophrenia-associated environmental risks and antipsychotic medication.
2009 - 2010
FCT-MCTS Integration in Research Grant
1680 euros to develop the research project A bioquimica da Arte at Chemistry Department (REQUIMTE), School of Science and Technology, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal). Awarded by Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (Portugal).
Molecular biology
- DNA methylation profiling: Qiagen Pyrosequencer, Illumina microarray technology (450K) and Sequenom MassArray system
- Nucleic acid extraction from post-mortem tissue and bacterial cultures, purification, quantification and amplification
- High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC)
- Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA)
- Fluorescence Microscopy
Bioinformatics and statistical analysis
- Statistical analysis (SPSS, STATA and R statistical software)
- Unix programming language
- Perl programming language
Pidsley R, Viana J, Dixit A, Jeffries A, Newhouse S, Dobson R, Wong CCY, Troakes C, Al-Sarraj S, Schalkwyk L, Mill J. (In preparation) Integrated analysis of genome-wide DNA methylation, gene expression and genotype in post-mortem schizophrenia brain samples.
Viana J* Pidsley R*, Troakes C, Spiers H, Wong CCY, Al-Sarraj S, Craig I, Schalkwyk L, Mill J. (2014) Epigenomic and Transcriptomic Signatures of a Klinefelter's Syndrome (47,XXY) Karyotype in the Brain. Epigenetics 9: 0 - 1.
Dempster E, Viana J, Pidsley R, Mill J. (2013) Epigenetic studies of schizophrenia: progress, predicaments and promises for the future. Schizophrenia Bulletin 39(1):11-16.
Pidsley R, Fernandes C, Viana J, Paya-Cano JL, Liu L, Smith RC, Schalkwyk LC and Mill J (2012) DNA methylation at the Igf2/H19 imprinting control region is associated with cerebellum mass in outbred mice. Molecular brain 5:42.
Sandu ICA, Roque AC, Matteini P, Schäfer S, Agati G, Correia CR, Viana JFFP (2011) Fluorescence recognition of proteinaceous binders in works of art by a novel integrated system of investigation. Microscopy research and technique 324:316-324.
