Bessa, Jose

José Bessa completed his PhD degree in Developmental Biology at ICBAS (University of Porto; 2008), acquiring advanced knowledge in the development of Drosophila and Zebrafish visual systems. As a postdoc, Jose Bessa has joined the laboratory of Dr Gomez-Skarmeta, an expert in zebrafish Functional Genomics. Currently, José Bessa leads the Vertebrate Development and Regeneration group at i3S - Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde, Porto. The Vertebrate Development and Regeneration group studies the mechanisms of cis-transcriptional regulation of genes and how mutations on non-coding cis-transcriptional regulatory sequences might impact in the development of some human diseases, in particular diabetes and pancreatic cancer. To achieve this, the VDR lab uses genomic strategies to identify non-coding cis-transcriptional regulatory sequences and perform genetic functional assays in zebrafish to evaluate the function of these sequences.