Dr. Margarida Barroso,
Department of Biology, University of Virginia
Margarida Barroso received her Ph.D. in 1991 from the School of Sciences (Faculdade de Ciencias) at the University of Lisbon, Portugal. Following postgraduate training at Princeton University with Dr. Elizabeth Sztul, she joined the faculty of the Department of Biology at the University of Virginia in September of 1995. Dr. Barroso's research interests are to study the organization of the apical recycling endosome (ARE) in epithelial polarized MDCK cells. She developed a specific internalization protocol to accumulate fluorophore-labeled ligands in the ARE of polarized epithelial MDCK cells. She has also developed a confocal FRET analysis to determine whether these receptor-ligand complexes are arranged in sub-pixel endocytic microdomains. Her results suggest that receptor-ligand complexes are organized in sub-pixel microdomains in the ARE of polarized epithelial MDCK cells. These results are significant for the understanding of the functional subcompartmentalization of endocytic compartments.