Front Quad of Lincoln College, the walls covered in bright green ivy

Professor Pedro Carvalho

Professor Pedro Carvalho

  • E.P. Abraham Professor in Cell Biology

Profile

I grew up in Portugal, where I studied biochemistry at the University of Coimbra. In 2000, I joined David Pellman’s laboratory at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute (Boston, USA) as an exchange PhD student. After obtaining a Dphil in Biomedical Sciences, I joined Tom Rapoport’s laboratory at Harvard Medical School (Boston, USA) initially as a Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund Fellow and later as a Special Fellow of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. In 2010, I established my laboratory at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona. In the summer of 2016, I was appointed the EP Abraham Professor of Cell Biology at the University of Oxford and established my lab at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology.

Research

All cells in our body are highly compartmentalised by small membrane-bound structures or ‘organelles’, each with a unique identity and a specialised set of functions. My lab is interested in understanding how organelles form and acquire their distinctive proteome essential to carry their specialised functions. In particular, I focus on how organelle function is maintained through quality control processes, such as protein degradation. I am also interested in inter-organelle communications- which and how molecules are exchanged between organelles, which signals regulate those exchanges, etc.  Although my lab does mostly basic research, we are interested how these processes are disrupted in human disease.

Select publications

Olzmann JA, Carvalho P., 'Dynamics and functions of lipid droplets'. Nat Rev Mol Cell Bio doi: 10.1038/s41580-018-0085-z (2018).

Wang S, Idrissi FZ, Hermansson M, Grippa A, Ejsing CS, Carvalho P., 'Seipin and the membrane-shaping protein Pex30 cooperate in organelle budding from the endoplasmic reticulum'. Nat Commun. Jul 27;9(1):2939 (2018).

Teixeira V, Johnsen L, Martínez-Montañés F, Grippa A, Buxó L, Idrissi FZ, Ejsing CS, Carvalho P., 'Regulation of lipid droplets by metabolically controlled Ldo isoforms'. J Cell Biol. Jan 2;217(1):127-138 (2018).

Ruggiano A, Mora G, Buxó L, Carvalho P., 'Spatial control of lipid droplet proteins by the ERAD ubiquitin ligase Doa10'. EMBO J. Aug 1;35(15):1644-55 (2016).

Foresti O, Rodriguez-Vaello V, Funaya C, Carvalho P., 'Quality control of inner nuclear membrane proteins by the Asi complex'. Science. 346(6210):751-5 (2014).