Projet McGEA (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Staff Exchanges
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : SIGNED

"By far, nature is the best chemist of all time" according to Nobel Prize winner Frances Arnold. McGEA will develop nature inspired strategies to help avert the pending climate catastrophe. We will discover, characterize, engineer and exploit metalloenzymes as potent biocatalysts to efficiently perform chemically challenging reactions of high environmental impact. Specifically, we will use metalloenzymes to tackle three burning issues that fall squarely in the remit of the EU Green Deal action plan: CO2 capture, (bio)hydrogen production, and wastewater monitoring and remediation. These challenges will be addressed using purified metalloenzymes incorporated into hybrid materials and live bacterial cells as self-regenerating catalytic metalloenzyme carriers. Implementation of these two strategies will proceed with research activities across the full pipeline of metalloenzyme development. This will include i) the assembly of the metallic co-factors, as a prerequisite for establishing protocols for efficient metalloenzyme production, ii) rational redesign, directed evolution and in silico strategies to develop enzyme variants that show improved catalytic activity and stability, and iii) the incorporation of the enzymes into matrices that allow for enzyme reusability, stabilization, or their self-assembly into multi-enzymatic nanostructures for substrate channeling. The execution of this program relies on a strong interdisciplinary and intersectoral team. The McGEA brings together 6 research groups from EU and 2 research groups from overseas, all of them internationally recognized for their scientific excellence, and 3 EU companies that will join forces to accelerate the transition to a climate-neutral Europe. The consortium is designed to provide a diverse portfolio of skills through staff secondments to achieve integration from the stages of fundamental scientific discovery to the development of metalloenzyme-based processes and prototype devices.

Mots clés : heme enzymes, iron sulfur enzymes, enzymatic co2 removal and h2 generation, biosensing and biodegradation

Participants :
- Chiralvision bv (Pays-Bas) — Partner, beneficiary, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 59800.0 €
- Giotto Biotech (Italy) (Italie) — Partner, beneficiary, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 18400.0 €
- Université de Florence (Italie) — Partner, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 96600.0 €
- Conseil national de la recherche scientifique et technique (Argentine) — Partner, associated partner, Recherche, subvention : 0.0 €
- Université de technologie de Delft (Pays-Bas) — Partner, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 96600.0 €
- Zymvol biomodeling sl (Espagne) — Partner, beneficiary, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 78200.0 €
- Université technique de Berlin (Allemagne) — Partner, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 142600.0 €
- Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France) — Partner, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 138000.0 €
- Université du Nouveau-Mexique (Etats-Unis) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Université nouvelle de Lisbonne (Portugal) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 372600.0 €
- Université technique du Danemark (Danemark) — Partner, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 36800.0 €