Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ARCGIRUS (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Giant viruses (GVs) comprise a ubiquitous and unique viral group. Their large genomes encode a majority of proteins with unknown functions, an important but overlooked source for new biotechnological breakthroughs. Most known GVs have been isolated in hosts from the genus Acanthamoeba and none has yet been found from the Arctic, one of the most important ecosystems in the world. This came as a surprise considering various metagenomic studies revealed the presence of GVs worldwide, especially in marine ecosystems. More studies on host-GVs interaction also bring forth their potential for viral-derived bioactive compounds. Hence, this project (ARCGIRUS) aims to innovate in giant virus research by (O1) isolating the first algal-infecting giant virus from the Arctic. This will overcome the Acanthamoeba-focused host bias and at the same time explore an important but never studied environment in this field. Then, I will (O2) characterize the isolates, and (O3) develop a novel method using mass spectrometry to find potential bioproducts at the phenotypic level from cells infected with giant viruses. The biological data obtained through this project will have an impact on virology and evolutionary biology, likely leading to interesting basic research projects and applied science advances, in addition to increased awareness of the Arctic virosphere, and nature in general. The GVs isolates and publications generated through this project will become important references in the field and open the possibility of collaboration. The use of social media and collaboration with museums will advertise the study of GVs and raise awareness of their role in the marine microbiome to general audiences. Overall, the novelty of finding giant viruses infecting microalgae from the Arctic, together with the training and knowledge acquired from this fellowship, will support my career goal of becoming a leading polar microbiologist specializing in giant viruses.

Mots clés : giant virus, arctic, microalgae, virus isolation and characterization, viral derived bioproduct, bioprospection, mass spectrometry

Participants :
- Université de Tromsø (Norvège) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 210911.04 €
Projet PalmHydraulics (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

How do biodiversity and ecosystem functioning respond to climate change? Currently, fundamental knowledge gaps prevent us from answering this most pressing question. Global climate is largely dependent on tropical forest functioning due to the scale of plant-driven ecosystem services that they provide (water and carbon cycling). Thus, research on tropical plants is essential to address the question. However, critical plant groups such as palms, which are hyperdominant in tropical forests, remain almost entirely neglected. The intricate relationship between plants and the environment is mediated by functional traits, but current models do not yet account for the dynamics of species and functional composition and thus fail to predict plant/climate responses accurately. This critical knowledge gap is the primary focus of PALMHYDRAULICS. The project will use palms as a model group to explore hydraulic traits, which are pivotal in plant/climate responses, but unstudied in palms, despite their importance. PALMHYDRAULICS will focus on the structure, ecology and evolution of palm hydraulic functioning. Through a novel, integrated research programme, PALMHYDRAULICS will use cutting-edge analyses to disentangle the role of trade-offs in plant hydraulic structure relating to species diversification, intraspecific variation, structural development and individual survival that underpin feedback mechanisms between plant effect on and responses to climate change. This comprehensive, ambitious approach builds on the world leadership of the host institution in integrated studies of the palm family, plant morphology and evolution, its unrivalled collections, and the complementary expertise of the host scientists and experienced researcher. Novel and extensive datasets will be produced and made openly accessible, and findings will be disseminated through the most prestigious scientific journals and a comprehensive public communication plan.

Mots clés : functional biology, plant anatomy

Participants :
- Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 195454.8 €
Projet AxoMatrx (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

How do dynamic changes of the extracellular matrix guide regenerative events in Axolotl? To what extent the dedifferentiation of mature cells is an intrinsic property of the cells or a product of interaction with the microenvironment is an exigent question in the regeneration field. In this project I will assess what initiates the regenerative response with an emphasis on deciphering what components are important for formation of the blastemal stem cell niche. Specifically, I will address whether ECM actively regulates the limb regenerative response or is merely a bystander. Although the importance of MMPs and ECM components in limb regeneration has been reported several times, few attempted to understand the role of ECM as signaling hub rather than as a “passive wall”. To address this, I will use tools developed in the Tanaka lab and combine those with my ECM expertise. I will characterize active ECM components during several distinct stages of limb regeneration to create an ECM “atlas” depicting extracellular changes during healing. I will use the obtained dataset to identify proteins which are important for the regenerative response by depleting these factors during axolotl regeneration and by testing their ability to induce ectopic limb growth using the Accessory Limb Model. Lastly, I will attempt to translate the axolotl findings to the mammalian setting and facilitate regeneration in a non-regenerating context. Surprisingly to date, no systemic characterization of extracellular molecules has been reported in regenerative systems, nor was any axolotl regenerative cue yet successfully translated to mammals. Thus, this characterization and candidate identification have far-reaching implications for both development and regenerative biology.

Mots clés : regenerative medicine, extracellular matrix

Participants :
- Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (Autriche) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 186167.04 €
Projet MAKEINTL (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

How does an organisation become international? How does it overcome the political, social, economic, cultural and material barriers to transnational collaboration - and what happens when it can't overcome them? This project explores this question by taking a global look at the creation of Amnesty International, one of the most well-known international non-governmental organisations in the world. This project will map the development of Amnesty from its origins in Europe in 1961 to its uneven spread across the globe throughout the following four decades, up until 2001. Using case studies from within the organisation it will clearly identify the factors that both facilitated and hindered its growth in different places, explaining why, after taking root in north-western Europe, some international branches proved fruitful while others withered. This difficult process of internationalising the organisation suggests that there are important limits and borders that global activism and international ideas must traverse. These limits are rarely examined, but without an understanding of them and the impact they had on the work done in the name of human rights, we are left with a distorted view of one of the most important political concepts of our time. Amnesty is commonly characterised as playing a crucial role in shaping contemporary understandings of human rights. The project analyses the ways that the uneven geography of Amnesty’s development shaped these understandings. As such, it constructs a historical geography of human rights that will be relevant to scholars, teachers and practitioners in the fields of international human rights cooperation and international organisations.

Mots clés : human rights, international organisations, non governmental organisations, amnesty international, north south relations

Participants :
- KU Leuven (Belgique) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 178320.0 €
Projet BCorp (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Economic Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

How entrepreneurs could profit from social responsible investments? This issue implies a balance between entrepreneurs’ investments in profitable business models and their engagement in non-profit social actions. To address this question, the project studies the B-Corporations as a new legal business form of corporations (private and public) pursuing benefits for society and shareholders. A non-profit certifying organization, B-Lab, analyses the impact of these companies on society, with particular attention to their ability to provide to ‘communities’ beneficial products or services. Although first established in US, now they are present in 34 countries across 121 industries. Employing this legal form of social companies, the proposal exploits the notion of community-focused strategies (CFS) to refer to the actions that entrepreneurs should pursue to establish links with communities to fulfill reciprocal social values. If people join communities to satisfy their identity needs, entrepreneurs might seek to align their ventures’ strategy to them to improve entrepreneurial performance. Building on social identity theory, entrepreneurial and strategy research, this project adopt mainly a demand-oriented approach. First, it tries to explain differences in new ventures’ performance investigating how B-Corps interact with their communities and through them access customers’ information and gaining loyalty. Second, it explores and profiles the B-Corps as new examples of social entrepreneurial ventures. Finally, it studies entrepreneurs’ strategies to develop long-term interactions with the communities. The statistical evidence is drawn from secondary data, surveys to entrepreneurs, and lab experiments. Implications on ventures’ success rate, growth and drawbacks of the interplay between social entrepreneurship and CFS are discussed.

Mots clés : social entrepreneurship, communities of social values, social oriented actions, entrepreneurial performance

Participants :
- IE University (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 158121.6 €
Projet VIOLA (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

How is early language development affected by the number of speakers infants are exposed to in their daily lives? Some infants spend most of their waking time with only one person, while others hear many different speakers. These children receive quite different input. Even if the very same words are spoken, these words are pronounced very differently when not one but multiple people spoke them. Laboratory studies point to a significant effect of such variability in the context of a short experiment: When infants hear multiple speakers, their ability to recognize the same word is hampered, whereas learning sounds and words improves. It remains an open question whether long-term exposure to multiple speakers in daily life helps or hinders language acquisition, as current theories lead to opposing predictions. This project combines experimental approaches with computational modeling. It will shed unprecedented light on how speaker variability in daily life affects language development, a question that has substantial implications for theories of language acquisition and for current diagnostic practices.


Participants :
- École normale supérieure PSL (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 173076.0 €
Projet CACOHET (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

How stem cell populations balance the opposing forces of self-renewal and differentiation to maintain a functional population is a question that strikes at the heart of what it means to be a stem cell. Undifferentiated embryonic stem cell (ESC) identity is maintained by transcription factors (TFs) of the pluripotency gene regulatory network (PGRN) centred on the TFs Oct4, Sox2 and Nanog. ESCs with high levels of Nanog self-renew efficiently while ESCs with low Nanog levels are prone to differentiate. Therefore, the observed heterogeneous expression of some PGRN components, in particular Nanog, is likely to be important for simultaneous maintenance of self-renewal and facilitation of differentiation, thereby sustaining functional pluripotency. In this proposal I will unravel mechanisms establishing heterogeneity and characterise the role of Nanog in generating ESC heterogeneity. By determining chromatin binding dependencies between TFs and by using a novel approach to identify functional cis-elements that mediate Nanog action, these studies will illuminate mechanisms regulating ESC phenotype. The hypothesis that pluripotency is generated by heterogeneity in PGRN component expression, that then generates an ESC population in which single cells have distinct intrinsic probabilities for differentiation into specific cell types will be tested. Interfering with PGRN component function locus-specifically using a high efficiency genome engineering strategy, will explore a new method to influence cell-fate. Together, the proposed innovative experiments aim to increase the understanding of the causes and consequences of PGRN component heterogeneity and the regulation of pluripotency that may be of relevance to other stem cell systems. The results will have important implications for ESC biology, in terms of increasing the efficiencies of ESC derivation, differentiation, and the use of ESCs in future cell based regenerative medicine approaches.

Mots clés : pluripotency, embryonic stem cells, nanog, transcription factor networks, heterogeneity, retrospective analysis of pluripotency factor binding, dcm methylation

Participants :
- University of Edinburgh (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 183454.8 €
Projet SolarIC (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

How well do we understand charged particle propagation in the solar system? This is an important topic for both astrophysics and space weather. Unfortunately, we still lack a fully predictive theory to this problem; a major challenge to this is the lack of cosmic-ray (CR) measurement throughout the solar system, as most data are measured locally on Earth. I propose to overcome this hurdle in my SolarIC project by using the solar inverse-Compton (IC) emission—produced by CR electrons scattering with Sunlight—as a remote probe for CR distribution throughout the solar system. I will achieve this through three main results. First, I will detect and analyze the solar IC emission with Fermi-LAT data to study its morphology and time dependence. Second, I will calculate the theoretical prediction of the solar IC emission for both GeV and MeV regimes, utilizing state-of-the-art CR simulations. This will be a theoretical foundation for interpreting the data. And for the first time, I will compute the polarization signatures of solar IC emission. Third, building on the previous two results, I will constrain and test contemporary models of CR propagation in the solar system through cross correlation of the Fermi-LAT data with the theory prediction. I will also perform a mock tomographic analysis of the solar IC emission, utilizing the polarization signature. This will be an important and novel prediction for the proposed future MeV space gamma-ray telescopes, such as e-ASTROGAM. Through my SolarIC project, I will demonstrate that solar IC emission can be used to provide valuable data and constraints on CR distribution in the solar system. This will be an important step leading to a better understanding of charged-particle propagation in the solar system, which will have significant impacts on many astrophysics disciplines including solar physics, cosmic-ray physics, neutrino astrophysics, and dark matter searches.

Mots clés : gamma rays, cosmic rays, solar modulation, dark matter, neutrinos

Participants :
- University of Amsterdam (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 175572.48 €
Projet HumAn (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

HumAn aims at providing insights into the biological dimensions of the sociopolitically constructed notions of kinship, citizenship and ethnicity in Archaic to Roman-era Boeotia (central Greece) by integrating mortuary data, historical information and osteoarchaeological analysis. Although identity negotiation is a social phenomenon, it has often constrained genetic relationships. Osteoarchaeological analysis can provide invaluable information on the extent of intermarriage and social mobility that accompanied belonging to specific groups. Ancient Boeotia is an ideal case study for the study of conflicting identities since it is characterized by the parallel evolution of the Boeotian League (the first Greek federal state) and a strong citizenship identity among Boeotian cities. The proposed project will explore genetic kinship and social structure in ancient Boeotian cities to assess whether belonging to specific groups hindered gene flow and social mobility. Written sources (historiography, drama, epigraphy), material culture (funerary data) and osteological analysis (macroscopic and microanalytical methods for the assessment of genetic relatedness, diet, activity, and health) will be amalgamated in achieving the aforementioned objective. The Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield, forms the ideal environment for this project given its tradition in funerary archaeology and the study of identity and social structure in past societies, as well as the ample training opportunities it will offer to the candidate. The exploration of identity negotiation in ancient Greece can play a major role in increasing public awareness regarding the antiquity of social diversity. Finally, HumAn will greatly enhance the applicant’s scientific profile by allowing her to assume a leading role in the introduction of bioarchaeology into Classical studies, offering her training in the latest osteological techniques, and engaging her with diverse public outreach activities.

Mots clés : osteoarchaeology, bioarchaeology, statistical analysis

Participants :
- University of Sheffield (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 183454.8 €
Projet HIV VCC Interference (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Human Immunodeficiency Virus type 1 (HIV-1) remains a significant cause of comorbidity and mortality around the world. One of HIV-1 persistence and immune evasion mechanisms is the ability to create hidden virus reservoirs in cells. These virus reservoirs, termed Virus-Containing Compartments (VCCs) are inaccessible to the immune system and help to spread the infection to different parts of the body. VCCs are unaffected by current HIV-1 therapies, and thus remain a major obstacle in the development of successful HIV-1 cure strategies. This project will take a novel approach to the interference with this mechanism of HIV-1 persistence by characterising and exploiting unique molecular dynamics inside VCCs in dendritic cells. Cutting edge super-resolution microscopy techniques enable the study of single molecule behaviour and have already been employed to investigate the minute details of virus-cell interactions during HIV-1 assembly, entry and cell-to-cell spread. These interactions were shown to depend on a specific arrangement and mobility of virus and cell molecules suggesting that efficient virus sequestration and release from VCCs may also require a specific distribution and dynamics of interacting lipids and proteins. Specifically, the “HIV VCC Interference” project aims to: 1) characterise the distribution and dynamics of lipids and proteins in VCCs as a whole and at the sites of virus-cell interactions using super-resolution microscopy; 2) assess the unique characteristics of these sites as targets for interference with HIV-1 persistence and to explore the potential of these targets by testing drugs that perturb specific aspects of cell membranes. These studies, which are aligned with objectives of MSCA-IF, will lead to the description of novel single molecule details of VCC environments and the characterisation of a new type of HIV-1 therapy that targets virus persistence by interfering with unique membrane properties of virus reservoirs.

Mots clés : hiv 1, immune evasion, virus persistence, dendritic cells, vccs, super resolution microscopy, sted, sted fcs

Participants :
- CERCA Institution (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 158121.6 €