Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : DEEPCAT (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : University of Konstanz — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2494829.0 €

Plastics are essential to virtually any modern technology and therefore ubiquitious. However, when released to the environment they can persist for centuries. One pillar of a responsible future economy is therefore to endow important plastics with a non-persistent nature. Polyethylene (PE) is the largest scale synthetic material, used in transportation, energy storage, water cleaning, clothing and many other fields. However, it is most problematic concerning degradability. This proposal addresses this major challenge by introducing photo- and hydrolytically degradable groups in the PE chain. Directly during catalytic PE synthesis, isolated keto groups will be generated by incorporation of small amounts of carbon monoxide. This yet unachieved goal is targeted via catalysts with extreme shielding and rigid ligand environments in heterobimetallic Ni(II) / main group metal complexes. A compartmentalized aqueous polymerization with precise control of high ethylene/CO ratios will yield the in-chain functionalized PE as nano- and microscale particle dispersions. Living catalytic polymerization in nanoparticles is pursued to achieve ultra high molecular weights and gradient PE chains forming nanodomains varying in ketone density. Aqueous heterophase oxidation with benign oxidants on all these nanoparticle will yield in-chain ester groups. Further types of hydrolytically cleavable groups are targeted via the complementary synthetic approach of step growth from seed- or microalgae-oil derived PE-telechelics. This yields linear PE with in-chain carbonate, acetal and anhydride groups. Basic materials properties of all polymers are determined by tensile tests. Degradation studies reflecting a marine environment will indicate the persistency behaviour and fate of microfragments, using macroscopic specimens and the above particles as models. Knowledge of the particle and bulk morphologies will be instrumental to understand the materials and degradation properties.

Mots-clés : polymerization catalysis,renewable feedstocks,sustainable polymers,functionalized polyethylene,organometallic mechanisms,polyethylene like materials,long chain polyesters
Projet ERC : ReVolusions (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : VU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1709240.0 €

Plate tectonics are fundamental to the geochemical cycles that link Earth’s mantle and exosphere and in turn control the atmosphere’s composition and our climate. Currently a major unknown is the exact fate of surface materials at destructive plate-tectonic boundaries (subduction zones). Specifically, what proportions of volatiles, sediments and oceanic crust are transported into the deep mantle, or are returned, i.e. ‘recycled’ to the crust and atmosphere. Global recycling flux estimates, including carbon, are contradictory highlighting the need for a new, more precise approach to their quantification. I propose to better quantify global recycling fluxes by a geochemical study of two types of subduction zones: continental and oceanic zones of which the former has higher volatile fluxes and plays a key role in past and present-day climate change. The proposed work utilises isotope analyses of deeply formed melt inclusions, tiny pockets of melt trapped in minerals, to directly determine what comes back up in subduction zones. Undertaking a multiple isotope study of these inclusions is now possible, owing to my recent success in significantly improving mass spectrometer detector amplifier technology that led to an order of magnitude improvement in precision for isotope analyses of small samples. I will integrate two ground-breaking techniques to identify recycled components and determine volcanic and deep mantle fluxes: 1) coupled Sr-Nd-Pb isotope ratio analysis of individual melt inclusions using the high-gain amplifier method I pioneered; 2) carbon and oxygen isotope analysis of CO2 from melt inclusions using a newly developed crushing technique. The outcomes of ReVolusions will provide crucial understanding of how subduction geodynamics control the distribution of elements between Earth’s major reservoirs (atmosphere, crust and mantle) that affects short and long-term climate changes.

Mots-clés : subduction recycling,geochemical cycles,subduction zone,melt inclusion
Projet ERC : EURO-LAB (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : University of Southampton — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1827855.0 €

Plate tectonics has been a fundamental tenet of Earth Science for nearly 50 years, but fundamental questions remain, such as where is the base of the plate and what makes a plate, “plate-like?” A better understanding of the transition from the rigid lithospheric plate to the weaker mantle beneath – the rheological lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary (LAB) - has important implications for the driving forces of plate tectonics, natural hazard mitigation, mantle dynamics, the evolution of the planet, and climate change. There are many proxies used to estimate the depth and nature of the base of tectonic plates, but to date no consensus has been reached. For example, temperature is known to have a strong effect on the mechanical behaviour of rocks. However, it has also been suggested that the chemical composition of the plate provides additional strength or that melt weakens the mantle beneath the plate. We are at a critical juncture where large-scale efforts using geophysical, geochemical, and geological techniques are being launched to better understand the definition of the tectonic plate. The simple and short history of the ocean plate makes it the ideal location to advance our understanding. However, imaging the oceanic LAB has proved challenging given the remoteness of the oceans and associated difficulties in instrumentation. Most observations come from only one ocean, the Pacific, from indirect, remote observations, at different areas and scales. I propose a large-scale effort to systematically image an oceanic plate beneath the Atlantic from birth at ridge to 40 My old seafloor. I will deploy ocean bottom seismometers (OBS) and magnetotelluric (MT) instruments, and I will image the plate at a range of resolution scales (laterally and in depth) and sensitivities to physical and chemical properties. This large, focused, interdisciplinary effort will finally determine the processes and properties that make a plate strong and define it.

Mots-clés : lithosphere asthenosphere
Projet ERC : MetEpiStem (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cellular, Developmental and Regenerative Biology
Entité participante : University of Padua — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UNIPD
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1498232.0 €

Pluripotent Stem cells (PSCs) can give rise to all differentiated cells of the body and the germ line, which makes them conceptually fascinating and a valuable tool for regenerative medicine. Mouse PSCs are devoid of any developmental restriction partly thanks to their “open” chromatin, characterised by remarkably low levels of repressive epigenetic modifications. Metabolism is a key feature that can be adjusted to meet the cell’s needs, and that has the potential to feedback on transcription and epigenetics. How metabolism is regulated in PSCs and whether this is important for their biology remains largely unknown. We recently found a new molecular mechanism by which energy production is coupled to pluripotency. Here we propose to deepen our understanding of how metabolism, epigenetics and transcription are reciprocally regulated for the self-renewal and differentiation of PSCs. To gain insights into how metabolism is dynamically regulated in concert with the transcriptome and epigenome, we will also use somatic cell reprogramming into PSCs, a process in which both the metabolic and epigenetic profiles must be reset to match those of PSCs. Moreover, taking advantage of the recent generation of novel human PSCs sharing most of the transcriptional and epigenetic features found in naïve mouse PSCs, we will explore how metabolic regulatory mechanisms key for the generation and maintenance of pluripotency are conserved throughout evolution. Altogether, large-scale transcriptional, epigenetic and metabolic profiling of PSCs, combined with cutting edge technologies for their generation, expansion and genetic manipulation, will give us the unprecedented opportunity to build a comprehensive computational model of the metabolic network in PSCs, and to study how gene transcription and metabolism regulate each other.
Projet ERC : EmergentCommunity (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : Tampere University — Pays : Finlande — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1814886.0 €

Polarization and inequality amongst citizens are on the rise across Europe. In a context of multiple, and intersecting forms of diversity, peaceful coexistence has been increasingly placed under sustained pressure. Crucially, the urgency of finding sustainable solutions to these developments is constrained by a lack of conceptual and theoretical nuance that inhibits critical thinking about emergent constellations of social and political life. This project explores how affective orientations and everyday practices of peace and conflict intertwine and influence societies. In this respect, the study adopts an interdisciplinary research design that uses multi-sited ethnography, immersive virtual technologies, and psycho-physiological measuring to provide cutting-edge insight into community dynamics. The study will provide new grounded knowledge on how societies hold together whilst social and political positions within and between communities multiply. Using complexity as an analytical angle, the project considers the relations, tensions, and forms of collaboration that unfold in the course of everyday life in nine urban neighbourhoods in Finland, Sweden and France. The three countries share a mix of similarities and differences through which the variations in community dynamics and their societal consequences can be identified. Through the adopted interdisciplinary approach, the project will generate beyond state-of-the-art insight into how community dynamic in contemporary societies develops. It will use this knowledge to rethink the notion of community. In the final stage of the project, the empirical, methodological and conceptual insights will be combined to feed into the process of building a theory of emergent communities through which changes to the form of social and political life can be understood. The project will have a high societal impact by providing policymakers and politicians with knowledge on how social sustainability and inclusion can be promoted.

Mots-clés : community relations,everyday conflict and coexistence,complexity,multi sited ethnography,social and political life,migration
Projet ERC : POPMET (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Biotechnology and Biosystems Engineering
Entité participante : Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : VIB
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499251.0 €

Poplar is an important woody biomass crop and at the same time the model of choice for molecular research in trees. Although there is steady progress in resolving the functions of unknown genes, the identities of most secondary metabolites in poplar remain unknown. The lack of metabolite identities in experimental systems is a true gap in information content, and impedes obtaining deep insight into the complex biology of living systems. The main reason is that metabolites are difficult to purify because of their low abundance, hindering their structural characterization and the discovery of their biosynthetic pathways. In this project, we will use CSPP, an innovative method recently developed in my lab, to systematically predict the structures of metabolites along with their biosynthetic pathways in poplar wood, bark and leaves. This CSPP method is based on a combination of metabolomics and informatics. In a next step, the CSPP tool will be combined with two complementary genetic approaches based on re-sequence data from 750 poplar trees to identify the genes encoding the enzymes in the predicted pathways. Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) will be made to identify SNPs in the genes involved in the metabolic conversions. Subsequently, rare defective alleles will be identified for these genes in the sequenced population. Genes identified by both approaches will then be further studied either by crossing natural poplars that are heterozygous for the defective alleles, or by CRISPR/Cas9-based gene editing in poplar. The functional studies will be further underpinned by enzyme assays. Given our scarce knowledge on the structure of most secondary metabolites and their metabolic pathways in poplar, this large-scale identification effort will lay the foundation for systems biology research in this species, and will shape opportunities to further develop poplar as an industrial wood-producing crop.

Mots-clés : poplar,biochemical pathways,metabolomics,gwas,genome sequence,reverse genetics
Projet ERC : OptimHist (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed matter physics
Entité participante : Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ETH Zurich
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1498214.0 €

Populations of living organisms are pushed to optimality by evolution, but may also be shaped by the contingency of their evolutionary history. The recent explosion of sequence data gives us access to the outcomes of molecular evolution, and controlled microbial evolution experiments allow us to analyze the predictability of evolution. In this exciting context, I aim to explore quantitatively the importance of optimization and contingency both at the molecular scale and at the scale of populations of microorganisms, using a theoretical biophysical approach. First, I will assess how functional optimization and evolutionary history, i.e. phylogeny, shape protein sequences. Importantly, correlations arising from phylogeny are a double-edged sword, often confounding signal from functional optimization, but sometimes providing useful complementary information. I will improve sequence-based predictions for protein-protein interactions by exploiting information both from phylogeny and from the required complementarity of interacting residues. I will disentangle the collective modes of correlations in protein sequences due to optimization from those due to phylogeny, and investigate the importance of functional sectors as an organizing principle of proteins. This will be a breakthrough in our understanding of the sequence-function relationship of proteins. Second, I will analyze the impact of optimization and contingency on the evolution of microbial populations. I will study microorganisms with a rugged fitness landscape presenting several optima. In these realistic cases, populations tend to remain trapped in local optima. However, most real populations possess specific geographic structures. I will quantitatively study how structure helps populations to explore model and real rugged fitness landscapes. I will build a universal model of structured populations. I will then focus on important applications to antimicrobial resistance evolution and to expanding populations.

Mots-clés : correlations,optimization,phylogeny,inference,protein sequence data,protein protein interactions,rugged fitness landscape,population subdivision
Projet ERC : PEP (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : University of Amsterdam — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UvA
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Positive emotions are of great importance for our physical and mental health and for our social relationships. However, scientific knowledge of positive emotions is lacking, with research to date being both fractionated and scarce. The Positive Emotions Project (PEP) takes on the challenge of formulating a foundational, empirically-based framework of positive emotions. This is accomplished by a set of studies combining methodologies that examine both subjective and objective elements of 17 positive emotions, including gratitude, awe, amusement, compassion, and relief. Central to the investigation is the integration of cross-cultural and developmental approaches, in order to differentiate between consistent patterns and idiosyncratic features. Project 1 will use experience sampling to map out the experience of positive emotions across ten dramatically different cultures, examining subjective elements of emotions, such as antecedent events and psychological states. Project 2 will comprehensively establish which nonverbal facial and vocal signals are associated with different positive emotions across cultures and ages. Project 3 will provide an integrated multi-level account of positive emotions, considering similarities and differences across emotions, taking into account cross-cultural and developmental patterning of subjective and objective features. The empirical and theoretical results of PEP will result in new, innovative paradigms, and substantial, freely available datasets that will help to redress the current dearth of data and approaches for understanding positive emotions. It will also provide the basis for a much-needed scientific, multifaceted account of positive emotion. Such a model will benefit scientists across many disciplines, including affective computing, behavioural economics, and psychiatry, whose work builds on psychological models of emotions.
Projet ERC : LIFEMODE (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : University of Vienna — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Univie
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999566.0 €

Possible Life: The Philosophical Significance of Extending Biology Due to the latest technological advances in genetic engineering and space technology, scientists have developed strategies to engineer novel biological systems in laboratories, and to study through space telescopes the signs of possible life from other planets and solar systems. These newly discovered biological possibilities may turn out to be epoch-making. Apart from challenging our notion of life, they also have fundamental philosophical implications. The very question motivating the project is: How is biology being extended beyond the actual evolved life on Earth – and what is the philosophical significance of the turn to possible life? This question is studied through a two-pronged approach that puts scientific practice into a dialogue with philosophy of science and naturalistic metaphysics. First, the project examines the emerging fields of synthetic biology and astrobiology. The key themes studied include unnatural biochemical bases and organizational principles of life, synthetic life, evolutionary possibilities and constraints, and the habitability of exoplanets. Empirical studies in six leading laboratories in Europe and the US are used to inform the study of these themes. Second, the research on possible life is employed as a resource for the development of philosophical theory. The three philosophical subprojects examine (i) modelling and simulating the possible, (ii) multiple realizability of biological kinds, and (iii) contingency and necessity in biology. The project will advance our understanding of the modal dimension of science by addressing a paramount case – life. The project draws together and develops diverse strands in theorizing of the possible within philosophy of science and metaphysics. Through an unconventional combination of philosophical and empirical analysis the project seeks to facilitate the application of metaphysical concepts to cutting-edge scientific research.

Mots-clés : life,possibility,models,multiple realizability,modalities
Projet ERC : Ubl-Code (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems
Entité participante : Weizmann Institute of Science — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Post-translational modifications (PTMs) of proteins are a major tool that the cell uses to monitor events and initiate appropriate responses. While a protein is defined by its backbone of amino acid sequence, its function is often determined by PTMs, which specify stability, activity, or cellular localization. Among PTMs, ubiquitin and ubiquitin-like (Ubl) modifications were shown to regulate a variety of fundamental cellular processes such as cell division and differentiation. Aberrations in these pathways have been implicated in the pathogenesis of cancer. Over the past decade high-throughput genomic and transcriptional analyses have profoundly broadened our understanding of the processes underlying cancer development and progression. Yet, proteomic analyses and the PTM landscape in cancer, remained relatively unexplored. Our goal is to decipher molecular mechanisms of Ubl regulation in cancer. We will utilize the PTM profiling technology that I developed and further develop it to allow for subsequent MS analysis. Together with cutting-edge genomic, imaging and proteomic technologies, we will analyze novel aspects of PTM regulation at the level of the enzymatic machinery, the substrates and the downstream cellular network. We will rely on ample in-vitro and in-vivo characterization of Ubl conjugation to:a. Elucidate the regulatory principles of substrate specificity and recognition. b. Understand signalling dynamics in the ubiquitin system. c. Reveal how aberrations in these pathways may lead to diseases such as cancer. Identifying both the Ubl modifying enzymes and the modified substrates will form the basis for deciphering the molecular pathways in which they operate in the cell and the principles of their dynamic regulation. Revealing the PTM regulatory code presents a unique opportunity for the development of novel therapeutics. More broadly, our approaches may provide a new paradigm for addressing other complex biological questions involving PTM regulation.

Mots-clés : ubiquitin,ubiquitin like modifications,post translational modifications,e3 ligase,cancer,nsclc,fat10