About Me

I am half English (Wessex) and half Italian (Sicily) and to make things more confusing I have lived in a few other places: New Hampshire, New Zealand (Dunedin, close to Rohan and Lothlórien) and Copenhagen. I collect hobbies of the nerdier kind: everything for me seems to turn into an intriguing experiment and in my free time, I sometimes code for fun, rewire the electrics in the house, 3D print something utterly useless and cursed or solder components for an equally useless and janky Raspberry-Pi–based sensor.

Research Interests

I am a computational biochemist working in drug design.

My loyalties lie with molecular thermodynamics, but I am starting to fall the allure of deep learning.

I am currently working on Fragmenstein, github.com/matteoferla/Fragmenstein, a tool that stitches molecules together and reanimates them in order to help assess follow up compounds in fragment-based drug discovery.

Previously, I have developed Michalenglo (michelanglo.sgc.ox.ac.uk/), a tool allowing the sharing of representations of 3D structures of protein with interactive annotations, and Venus (venus.cmd.ox.ac.uk/venus), a tool that combines different sources of information in order to determine what could be the effect of a missense variant beyond simple destabilisation.

For other projects of mine, visit my github: github.com/matteoferla

Additionally, I have a science blog (blog.matteoferla.com) ranging from technical tutorials to monographic discussions/rants.

Publications

Tan, N., Pagnamenta, A., Ferla, M., Gadian, J., Chung, B., Chan, M., Fung, J., Cook, E., Guter, S., Boschann, F., Heinen, A., Schallner, J., Mignot, C., Keren, B., Whalen, S., Sarret, C., Mittag, D., Demmer, L., Stapleton, R., Saida, K., Matsumoto, N., Miyake, N., Sheffer, R., Mor-Shaked, H., Barnett, C., Byrne, A., Scott, H., Kraus, A., Cappuccio, G., Brunetti-Pierri, N., Iorio, R., Di Dato, F., Pais, L., Yeung, A., Tan, T., Taylor, J., Christodoulou, J. and White, S. (2022) “Recurrent de novo missense variants in GNB2 can cause syndromic intellectual disability.”, Journal of medical genetics, 59(5), pp. 511–516.

Marafi, D., Fatih, J., Kaiyrzhanov, R., Ferla, M., Gijavanekar, C., Al-Maraghi, A., Liu, N., Sites, E., Alsaif, H., Al-Owain, M., Zakkariah, M., El-Anany, E., Guliyeva, U., Guliyeva, S., Gaba, C., Haseeb, A., Alhashem, A., Danish, E., Karageorgou, V., Beetz, C., Subhi, A., Mullegama, S., Torti, E., Sebastin, M., Breilyn, M., Duberstein, S., Abdel-Hamid, M., Mitani, T., Du, H., Rosenfeld, J., Jhangiani, S., Coban Akdemir, Z., Gibbs, R., Taylor, J., Fakhro, K., Hunter, J., Pehlivan, D., Zaki, M., Gleeson, J., Maroofian, R., Houlden, H., Posey, J., Sutton, V., Alkuraya, F., Elsea, S. and Lupski, J. (2022) “Biallelic variants in SLC38A3 encoding a glutamine transporter cause epileptic encephalopathy.”, Brain : a journal of neurology, 145(3), pp. 909–924.

Ferla, M., Pagnamenta, A., Koukouflis, L., Taylor, J. and Marsden, B. (2022) “Venus: Elucidating the impact of amino acids variants on protein function beyond structure destabilisation”, Journal of Molecular Biology, 434(11).

Scala, M., Wortmann, S., Kaya, N., Stellingwerff, M., Pistorio, A., Glamuzina, E., van Karnebeek, C., Skrypnyk, C., Iwanicka-Pronicka, K., Piekutowska-Abramczuk, D., Ciara, E., Tort, F., Sheidley, B., Poduri, A., Jayakar, P., Jayakar, A., Upadia, J., Walano, N., Haack, T., Prokisch, H., Aldhalaan, H., Karimiani, E., Yildiz, Y., Ceylan, A., Santiago-Sim, T., Dameron, A., Yang, H., Toosi, M., Ashrafzadeh, F., Akhondian, J., Imannezhad, S., Mirzadeh, H., Maqbool, S., Farid, A., Al-Muhaizea, M., Alshwameen, M., Aldowsari, L., Alsagob, M., Alyousef, A., AlMass, R., AlHargan, A., Alwadei, A., AlRasheed, M., Colak, D., Alqudairy, H., Khan, S., Lines, M., García Cazorla, M., Ribes, A., Morava, E., Bibi, F., Haider, S., Ferla, M., Taylor, J., Alsaif, H., Firdous, A., Hashem, M., Shashkin, C., Koneev, K., Kaiyrzhanov, R., Efthymiou, S., Genomics, Q., Schmitt-Mechelke, T., Ziegler, A., Issa, M., Elbendary, H., Striano, P., Alkuraya, F., Zaki, M., Gleeson, J., Barakat, T., Bierau, J., van der Knaap, M., Maroofian, R. and Houlden, H. (2022) “Clinico-radiological features, molecular spectrum, and identification of prognostic factors in developmental and epileptic encephalopathy due to inosine triphosphate pyrophosphatase (ITPase) deficiency.”, Human mutation, 43(3), pp. 403–419.

Van Gucht, I., Meester, J., Bento, J., Bastiaansen, M., Bastianen, J., Luyckx, I., Van Den Heuvel, L., Neutel, C., Guns, P.-J., Vermont, M., Fransen, E., Perik, M., Velchev, J., Alaerts, M., Schepers, D., Peeters, S., Pintelon, I., Almesned, A., Ferla, M., Taylor, J., Dallosso, A., Williams, M., Evans, J., Rosenfeld, J., Sluysmans, T., Rodrigues, D., Chikermane, A., Bharmappanavara, G., Vijayakumar, K., Maroofian, R., Al-Hassnan, Z., Vogt, J., Revencu, N., Maystadt, I., Pagnamenta, A., Van Laer, L., Loeys, B. and Verstraeten, A. (2022) “The first human importin-β-related disorder: syndromic thoracic aortic aneurysm caused by bi-allelic loss-of-function variants in IPO8”, in EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN GENETICS, pp. 5–6.

Salter, C., Cai, Y., Lo, B., Helman, G., Taylor, H., McCartney, A., Leslie, J., Accogli, A., Zara, F., Traverso, M., Fasham, J., Lees, J., Ferla, M., Chioza, B., Wenger, O., Scott, E., Cross, H., Crawford, J., Warshawsky, I., Keisling, M., Agamanolis, D., Ward Melver, C., Cox, H., Elawad, M., Marton, T., Wakeling, M., Holzinger, D., Tippelt, S., Munteanu, M., Valcheva, D., Deal, C., Van Meerbeke, S., Walsh Vockley, C., Butte, M., Acar, U., van der Knaap, M., Korenke, G., Kotzaeridou, U., Balla, T., Simons, C., Uhlig, H., Crosby, A., De Camilli, P., Wolf, N. and Baple, E. (2021) “Biallelic PI4KA variants cause neurological, intestinal and immunological disease.”, Brain : a journal of neurology, 144(12), pp. 3597–3610.

Hikmat, O., Isohanni, P., Keshavan, N., Ferla, M., Fassone, E., Abbott, M.-A., Bellusci, M., Darin, N., Dimmock, D., Ghezzi, D., Houlden, H., Invernizzi, F., Kamarus Jaman, N., Kurian, M., Morava, E., Naess, K., Ortigoza-Escobar, J., Parikh, S., Pennisi, A., Barcia, G., Tylleskär, K., Brackman, D., Wortmann, S., Taylor, J., Bindoff, L., Fellman, V. and Rahman, S. (2021) “Expanding the phenotypic spectrum of BCS1L-related mitochondrial disease.”, Annals of clinical and translational neurology, 8(11), pp. 2155–2165.

Kaiyrzhanov, R., Guliyeva, U., Gulieva, S., Salayev, K., Mursalova, A., Allahyarova, P., Ferla, M. and Houlden, H. (2021) “GM1-Gangliosidosis Type III Associated Parkinsonism.”, Movement disorders clinical practice, 8(Suppl 1), pp. S21 - S23.

Kurian, M., Kaiyrzhanov, R., Allahyarova, P., Guliyeva, U., Gulieva, S., Salayev, K., Mursalova, A., Ferla, M., Houlden, H. and Cardoso, F. (2021) “Commentary: GM1-Gangliosidosis Type III Associated Parkinsonism.”, Movement disorders clinical practice, 8(Suppl 1), pp. S24 - S25.

Keeble, A., Yadav, V., Ferla, M., Bauer, C., Chuntharpursat-Bon, E., Bon, R., Huang, J. and Howarth, M. (2021) “DogCatcher allows loop-friendly protein-protein ligation”, Cell Chemical Biology, 29(2), pp. 339–350.

Dr Matteo Ferla

About Me

Research Interests

Publications

Contact Details

Research Groups