I was awarded the PhD in Biology with the study of the molecular mechanisms involved in the evolution of a genetic code alteration (Silva et al., 2007) and, as a post-doctoral fellow, I have studied the role of mRNA mistranslation on cell physiology, degeneration and aging (Silva et al., 2009). As a Research Associate in the Population Genetics group at IPATIMUP, I became interested in the evolution of proteins and metabolic pathways, in particular, the dynamics of the NAD metabolic network and its roles in health and disease. These enzymes have been implicated in aging, infection and disease, and are the targets of a novel class of antitumor drugs (Duarte-Pereira et al., 2016). I am also involved in the development of bioinformatics tools to detect genome rearrangements and pathogen signatures, with implications for diagnosis and therapeutics (Silva et al., 2015). Additional lines of investigation are maintained in collaboration, to address the mechanisms of anti-fungal resistance in clinical isolates (Branco et al., 2017), and to predict the impact of human mutations (Azevedo et al., 2017). I have integrated the multidisciplinary project "New Strategies Applied to Neuropathological Disorders" (2013-2015), a collaboration between the bioinformatics group, the Chemistry Department and Health School from the University of Aveiro, and researchers from German Universities. I currently participate as a team member in the projects "NETDIAMOND:NEw Targets in DIAstolic heart failure: from coMOrbidities to persoNalizeD medicine" (2016-2019) and "pAGE:Life-long protein aggregation" (2017-2020).