Mariana Chaves Micheletto

Mariana holds a Bachelor's degree in Medical Physics from the Department of Physics at the Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences, and Languages of Ribeirão Preto, University of São Paulo (FFCLRP/USP), Brazil. She also earned a Master's degree from the Graduate Program in Physics Applied to Medicine and Biology (FAMB) of the same department. During her master's, her project focused on understanding the interactions of the Pp1,2-CCD protein with membrane mimetics and the immobilization attempts of the proteins in these structures. Additionally, she studied how electric charges and the presence of a ligand can influence the structure, stability, and function of CnACBP. She completed her PhD in 2023 as a student in the FAMB Graduate Program. Mariana also spent a year as a guest student in the Multifunctional Materials Laboratory at the Materials Department of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich. Her PhD project involved using X-rays as a source of excitation energy for photosensitive proteins, aiming to overcome the challenge of light penetration into the human body. Given the low interaction of X-rays with proteins, she utilized radioluminescent nanoparticles capable of converting the energy of ionizing radiation into photons of UV-visible light. This energy transfer between the radioluminescent nanoparticles and the proteins can lead to a conjugated nanocompound with radiation-exposure-dependent toxicity, potentially opening a new avenue for the use of genetically encoded photosensitizers in X-ray photodynamic therapy. Mariana has experience in classical molecular biology methodologies, such as cloning, subcloning, mutant construction, and expression/purification of heterologous proteins. She is also skilled in various spectroscopic and calorimetric techniques, including Circular Dichroism, fluorescence (steady-state and lifetime techniques), and Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC). In the field of nanotechnology, she has experience in producing radioluminescent nanomaterials and characterizing their morphological-structural properties (XRD, SEM, TEM), optical properties (UV-Vis Absorption, Photoluminescence, FTIR), Electronic Spin Resonance (ESR/EPR), and Radioluminescence. She served as a student representative on the postgraduate committee of the FFCLRP/USP from July 2021 to June 2022. (Fonte: Currículo Lattes)