Antonielle completed her PhD in 2018 at the University of Brasília, Brazil, with a research secondment at NMBU, Norway, where she described the enzymatic mechanisms underlying biomass degradation by Aspergillus tamarii. Since then, she has worked in Brazil, Belgium, and Spain on various projects involving fungal enzymes, microbiology, and protein biochemistry, with a focus on carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes) and lignocellulose biomass degradation.
She was a scientific collaborator at EMBRAPA (Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation), working on the YEASTZYME project, where she genetically engineered yeast and bacteria to produce biomass-degrading enzymes, characterizing them through mass spectrometry and chromatography. At Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), she participated in the Photo-assisted Polymers BioCatalysis project, using proteomic approaches to study fungal redox enzymes for enhanced agro-industrial waste hydrolysis, with a focus on photobiocatalysis. At Ghent University (UGent), she worked on TACBIO, developing and modeling a small-scale thermoacidophilic bioreactor for continuous cultivation of Sulfolobus acidocaldarius, and on MICRO4BIOGAS, enhancing methanogen resilience in anaerobic digestion. In Spain, at the Center for Plant Biotechnology and Genomics (CBGP), she contributed to the WALLADAPT project, focusing on the production and biochemical characterization of CAZymes from the wheat phytopathogen Zymoseptoria tritici.
Currently, she is a postdoctoral researcher at UGent, working on the ESA-funded INCITE project, where she is developing a novel pretreatment technology for biomass conversion with applications on Earth and in space. Additionally, she is a collaborating researcher at the University of Brasília, where she conducts omics analyses of fungal co-cultures, with an emphasis on CAZymes.
Top 5 publications in peer reviewed journals
- Monclaro AV, Gonçalves T, Magri S, Ovaert J, Decembrino D, Debecker DP, Kadowaki MAS, DoneuxT, Leener G, Zarattini M, Luhmer M, Cannella D. (2023). Melanin, a fungal photosensitizer for cellulose oxidizing AA9 LPMO enzymes. ChemCatChem. DOI: 10.1002/cctc.202300602
- Monclaro AV, Silva COG, Gomes HAR, Moreira LRS, Filho EXF. The enzyme interactome concept in filamentous fungi linked to biomass valorization. Bioresource Technology, v. 344, p. 126200, 2022.
- Monclaro AV, Petrovic D, Alves GSC, Costa MMC, Midorikawa GEO, Miller RNG, Filho EXF, Eijsink VGH, Varnai A. Characterization of two family AA9 LPMOs from Aspergillus tamarii with distinct activities on xyloglucan reveals structural differences linked to cleavage specificity. PLOS ONE, v. 15,
p. 1 19, 2020. - Zarattini M, Corso M, Kadowaki MA, Monclaro AV , Magri S, Milanese I, Jolivet S, Godoy MO, Hermans C, Fagard M, Cannella D. LPMO oxidized cellulose oligosaccharides evoke immunity in Arabidopsis conferring resistance towards necrotrophic fungus B. cinerea. Communications Biology, v. 4, p. 1 13, 2021.
- Monclaro AV, Recalde GL, Silva FG, Freitas SM, Filho, EXF. Xylanase from Aspergillus tamarii shows different kinetic parameters and substrate specificity in the presence of ferulic acid. Enzyme and Microbial Technology, v. 120, p. 16 22, 2019.