Douglas Moraes Mendel Soares

Biologist and Ph.D. in Biochemistry (University of São Paulo, Brazil), including a short-term internship at University of Cambridge (UK). During his Ph.D., he characterized a dioxygenase involved in the biosynthesis of betalains and hygroaurins, rare fungal pigments, from the fly agaric mushroom (Amanita muscaria). Since 2019, he is a Postdoctoral researcher at the Fungal Bioluminescence Lab (Institute of Chemistry, University of São Paulo, Brazil), including periods as visiting researcher at California State University East Bay (California, USA), Virginia State University (Virginia, USA), and Imperial College London (London, UK). He collaborated as a research associate in a biotech project (2014-2018) granted by Natura (a Brazilian cosmetics company) and as a teaching assistant of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology for the Medicine, Pharmacy, and Chemistry courses at University of São Paulo, Brazil. Currently he is also a volunteer at the Brazilian Association of Synthetic Biology (SynBioBR). His main interest research topics include: bioluminescence of fungi, millipedes, and marine organisms; omics and synthetic biology of basidiomycete fungi; bioprospection of valuable metabolites and megasynthases from fungi; and environmental metagenomics using nanopore sequencing. (Source: Lattes Curriculum)