Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : PIWI-Chrom (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems
Entité participante : Austrian Academy of Sciences — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : OAW
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999530.0 €

Transposable elements—universal components of genomes—pose a major threat to genome integrity due to their mutagenic character. In all eukaryotic lineages small RNA pathways act as defense systems to protect the host genome against the activity of transposons. The central pathway in animals is the gonad-specific PIWI interacting RNA (piRNA) pathway, one of the most elaborate but also least understood small RNA silencing systems. Here I propose to study the interplay between the piRNA pathway and chromatin biology in Drosophila with two aims: First, we will identify the factors and investigate the processes that underlie piRNA-guided silencing in the nucleus. Our objective is to understand how recruitment of an Argonaute protein to a nascent RNA mechanistically leads to the assembly of effector proteins that govern heterochromatin formation and transcriptional silencing. Second, we will study the biology of piRNA clusters, heterochromatic loci that encompass a library of transposon fragments and that act as the pathway’s memory system. Our goal is to uncover how a group of proteins—several of which are germline-specific variants of basic cellular factors—enable transcription within heterochromatin and control the downstream fate of the emerging non-coding RNAs. Our work centers on the piRNA pathway in Drosophila ovaries, undeniably the model system at the forefront of the field. By combining the strength of fly genetics with the power of genome-wide approaches we will uncover how heterochromatin on the one hand governs silencing and how the piRNA pathway on the other hand exploits it to facilitate the transcription of piRNA precursors. This will reveal fundamental insights into the co-evolution of transposons and host genomes. At the same time, by studying the piRNA pathway’s intersection with chromatin biology and transcription, we expect to reveal new insights into basic principles of gene expression.

Mots-clés : transposon biology,heterochromatin biology
Projet ERC : NeuroRemod (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Inserm
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1253046.21 €

Traumatic events such as strokes or lesions to the adult brain can trigger large-scale reorganization of neuronal activity thought to be critical for functional recovery. The anatomical and molecular events underlying such reorganization remain an enigma. While rapid and short term changes of connections at the synaptic scale are widely studied, little is known about the principles and mechanisms of long-term and large-scale reorganization of axonal branches in mature circuits. I hypothesize that long-range axonal branching events in a minority of neurons contribute significantly to the plasticity and reorganization of adult neuronal circuits via unknown intrinsic mechanisms of axons survival and extrinsic environmental cues. A major reason why so little is known about axon dynamics in the adult brain has been the immense technical challenge of imaging rare axonal events in the dense meshwork of the adult brain. To solve this problem, I will apply new 3D imaging and genetic tools I developed to help visualize and quantify axons and synapses in the whole brain in an unbiased way. First, I will study the brain-wide neurite and synaptic dynamics after lesion and their effect on circuit function and homeostasis to shed light on the scale of brain plasticity. Second, I will characterize the intrinsic molecular pathways controlling activity-driven branch dynamics with viral approaches. I will make extensive use of tissue clearing, 3D imaging, and state-of-the-art image analysis pipelines to streamline the analysis of neuronal network properties. Third, I will investigate the extrinsic molecular and environmental factors promoting axonal dynamics in the context of adult brain structural plasticity. By generating a conceptual and mechanistic framework for the properties and mechanisms of injury induced brain reorganization, this study may contribute to the future design of new strategies to promote brain repair and curb the progress of neurodegenerative diseases.
Projet ERC : TriboKey (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : Karlsruhe Institute of Technology — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : KIT
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1985047.91 €

Tribology, the science of interacting surfaces in relative motion, is crucial for many aspects of modern life. Friction and wear decisively impact the lifetime and durability of many products-from nanoelectromechanical systems to gears and engines. In the USA alone, an estimated 1E18 joules of energy could be saved each year through improved tribological practices. During sliding of a metallic contact, a mutated surface layer forms, carries most further plastic deformation and largely determines friction and wear. The origin and evolution of this distinct subsurface layer remains elusive, since our knowledge of the elementary mechanisms promoting these changes is limited. Only this knowledge however will allow for a strategic tailoring of tribologically loaded metals. In this project, we will elucidate these elementary mechanisms for a wide range of alloys and strain rates. We will develop ground-breaking new strategies for probing the subsurface microstructure during the tribological test itself with non-destructive testing sensors like ultrasound and eddy current, resulting in subsurface in situ tribology. The data from these sensors will be analysed online, during the tribological experiment, relying on cutting edge data science methods as they have already been applied for fatigue testing. Based on these analyses, implemented on a Field Programmable Gate Array, we will interrupt the test exactly when the dominating elementary mechanisms manifest themselves. These mechanisms will then be revealed by sophisticated electron microscopy and be visualized in deformation mechanism maps for unidirectional and reciprocating sliding. Such maps have proven very successful in other fields of materials science, e.g. creep at elevated temperatures. They are used to guide material selection and alloy development processes, yielding materials tailored for each specific tribological scenario, promising enormous savings in energy and resources, an important challenge of our time.

Mots-clés : materials science,tribology,deformation mechanisms,electron microscopy,data science
Projet ERC : Topo Ins Laser (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental constituents of matter
Entité participante : Technion – Israel Institute of Technology — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1864000.0 €

Triggered by condensed matter, a new frontier recently emerged: Photonic Topological Insulators (PTIs). These are photonic structures where the transport of light is topologically protected: light propagates in a unidirectional manner without reflection, even in the presence of corners, defects, or disorder. The first step toward PTIs was the electromagnetic analogue of the quantum Hall effect, employing magnetic fields in gyrooptic media. Bringing the concepts of topological insulators into photonics required fundamentally different effects, eluding researchers until in 2013 we demonstrated the first PTI. That, along with experiments in silicon photonics and pioneering theory work, launched the field of Topological Photonics. This proposal aims to explore the possibility of the “next big thing”, a fundamentally new concept, never suggested before in any context, with high potential impact on fundamentals and on lasers technology: we will explore the idea of the Topological Insulator Laser. Topological Insulator Lasers are lasers where the lasing mode is topologically protected: light propagates around the cavity unaffected by disorder and defects. Based on our preliminary studies, we envision that by lasing in a topological mode, the interplay between the topology and gain will lead to a highly efficient laser, robust to defects and disorder, that lases in a single mode even at high gain values. The road to achieve this goes against current knowledge: topological insulators are linear Hermitian closed systems, whereas the topological insulator laser is a non-Hermitian, highly nonlinear, open system. Our study will be theoretical and experimental, starting at the fundamentals of topological transport in systems with gain, and we will take it all the way to experimentally demonstrate the concepts in several different platforms. The idea of the Topological Insulator Laser is unique: success will mark a new milestone in optics and topological physics.

Mots-clés : topological photonics
Projet ERC : FORESTPOLICY (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : ETH Zurich
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 902746.25 €

Tropical forests are critical for human wellbeing through their contributions to climate stability, biodiversity conservation, food production, and rural livelihoods. Despite numerous global commitments to help conserve and restore tropical forests, these areas are disappearing faster than ever. The goal of this research is to provide major advancements in our understanding of the conditions under which forest-focused supply chain policies (FSPs), a form of voluntary environmental governance, can lead to improved conservation and livelihoods in the tropics. My proposal overcomes major methodological limitations of past work through four major innovations: i) a coordinated pan-tropical analysis of multiple forest-risk commodities, ii) simultaneous examination of conservation and livelihood outcomes, iii) a focus on mechanisms of impact, not just measures of impact, and iv) comparative study with triangulation across multiple scales and methods. I will examine the importance of four key contextual factors in determining FSP effectiveness: i) the degree of public sector involvement in the governance of land use behaviors in the target regions; ii) historical land use trends in the target regions; iii) supply chain arrangements for the targeted commodities; and iv) values of the targeted populations. Additionally, I examine how the type of implementation mechanism used (i.e., whether the firm immediately suspends non-compliant producers) interacts with these contextual factors in determining the effectiveness and equity of FSPs. By identifying the conditions under which different types of FSPs and related implementation mechanisms can deliver improved conservation and livelihood outcomes, the resulting analysis will provide urgently needed policy recommendations to companies and other policy makers for how to better tailor the design of FSPs to specific contexts.

Mots-clés : supply chain,forest,food,voluntary environmental policy,corporate sustainability,conservation,livelihood
Projet ERC : PANTROPOCENE (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The study of the human past
Entité participante : Max Planck Society — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : MPG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1362331.25 €

Tropical forests are globally recognised as biodiversity hotspots and environments that are crucial for climate regulation, landscape stability, and the carbon cycle. Local deforestation can have regional and global feedbacks and 20th-21st century human actions in tropical forests are seen as a key part of the ‘Anthropocene’ – or the anthropogenic domination of earth systems. It remains an open question, however, as to whether pre-industrial human impacts on these environments had similar earth systems effects. 15th to 18th century European colonial empires drew together long-separated Old and New World ecologies, with implications for species distributions, demography, and land management in the tropics. This followed millennia of indigenous activities with possible regional and global cumulative results. Yet, we have no concrete understanding of how pre-industrial impacts varied spatially and temporally, what they meant for local sustainability, and how they compare to modern human impacts. The PANTROPOCENE Project addresses these questions by taking the Spanish Empire as a frame of reference for using archaeological, historical, and palaeoenvironmental data to build ‘pan-tropical’ spatial characterisations of pre-colonial, colonial, and industrial land-use. Undertaking novel palaeoecological and landscape survey fieldwork in the Philippine Archipelago, the often-neglected centre of the Spanish East Indies, the project will bring new data together with existing records, notably from the Neotropics, to ensure full tropical coverage of the Spanish Empire. The results will be factored into climate, geomorphological, and atmospheric models to determine how changing pre-industrial technology, subsistence, and administration had regional and global feedbacks on occupied human environments, informing understandings of the pace and threat of contemporary land-use changes in the context of endemic Island Southeast Asian biodiversity and the tropics more broadly.

Mots-clés : anthropocene,tropical forest prehistory and history,archaeology,spanish empire,columbian exchange,pre industrial land use
Projet ERC : TroPeaCC (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : Quanterra systems ltd — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 262500.0 €

Tropical peatlands are the most carbon-dense ecosystems in the world and they store the equivalent of ~10 years of global anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Despite their importance, crucial questions remain about carbon cycling in tropical peatlands and improving understanding is critical as they are at high risk from climate change and drainage for oil palm cultivation. TroPeaCC will provide a step-change gain in our understanding of tropical peatland functioning and in projecting their response to climate change. PI Gallego-Sala will use her unique background that bridges peatland modelling and observations to deliver a novel interdisciplinary approach to tackle four outstanding questions about tropical peatlands: Q1: What controls the geographical distribution of peatlands in the tropics? TASK1: To assess the tropical peatland extent using a combination of models Q2: How large is the tropical peatland CO2 sink and what are its main climatic drivers? TASK2: To characterize the drivers of carbon accumulation rates in tropical peatlands using the palaeo-archive. Q3: How large is the methane flux in tropical peatlands? What are the main controls at the intercontinental scale? TASK3: To determine the main controls on methane fluxes in tropical peatlands, using eddy covariance, chamber-based gas flux measurements, and ground penetrating radar. Q4: What is the overall carbon balance of tropical peatlands and how will this change in the future? TASK4: To forecast future changes of the extent of tropical peatlands, of the carbon sink and of methane emissions, using the results of Tasks 1-3 to parameterise and evaluate a global dynamic vegetation model that includes tropical peatlands for the first time. The interdisciplinary approach will lead to a comprehensive understanding of the role of tropical peatlands in the global carbon cycle, allowing their inclusion in earth system models, and informing management decisions to optimise provision of multiple ecosystem services.

Mots-clés : tropical ecosystems,peatlands,carbon cycle
Projet ERC : O3-SML (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : University of Leeds — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 42750.0 €

Tropospheric ozone is a significant climate gas and has a major influence on air quality, public health, and food security. Ozone is lost to the Earth’s surface directly by “dry deposition”, which is an important loss process for this gas. Since the ocean represents 70% of the surface, uncertainties in the dry deposition to the “sea surface microlayer” (SML) of the ocean translate into large differences in the predicted global ocean dry deposition flux. There has been very limited experimental quantification of ozone deposition over the oceans, because making such measurements is technically very challenging, and estimates of oceanic ozone deposition velocities vary widely. The mechanistic details of the process are incomplete and parameterisations in models are untested against observations. This loss of ozone is acknowledged to be controlled predominantly by chemical reactions in the SML involving iodide and organic material, which not only determine how quickly ozone can be irreversibly taken up at the ocean surface, but may also constitute a source of trace gases to the marine atmosphere. Whilst there is a growing body of work on ozone interactions with oceanic iodide, the nature and reactivity of the organic material in the SML which interacts with ozone is completely unknown. This project will probe both the fundamental mechanisms on and in the SML involved in the loss of ozone and production of atmospherically important trace gases and, in a highly novel and agenda-setting approach, apply this mechanistic information to field observations of oceanic ozone fluxes and the corresponding biogeochemical properties of the SML. This highly interdisciplinary study involves aspects of physical chemistry, atmospheric chemistry, ocean chemistry and physics, and engineering. It transcends conventional boundaries by integrating across atmospheric and ocean science, reflecting the PIs world-leading expertise in field and laboratory science in these fields.

Mots-clés : biogeochemistry,chemical oceanography,eddy covariance,sea surface micro layer
Projet ERC : TRODITIES (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : University of Sussex — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1834588.01 €

Trust, Global Traders, and Commodities in a Chinese International City Yiwu, a city of 2 million in China’s commercially vibrant Zheijang province, is known by traders from countries including Afghanistan and Syria, the Ukraine and Mexico, and the UK and Russia, as being the world’s hub for wholesale of ‘small commodities’. Journalists have recently been struck both by Yiwu’s significance to consumption practices across the world and by the diverse mix of merchants that assemble in the city. Yet despite the clear insights into globalization and the significance of trade for forging relations between cultures offered by a study of a modern trading node such as Yiwu, the city has yet to be the focus of sustained research. The proposed project, Trust, Global Traders, and Commodities is an integrated comparative programme of research that will provide new empirical data and comparative analysis on the global trade in low-grade Chinese-made commodities. Its focus will be on the ways in which transnational trading activities are conducted in the cosmopolitan and dynamic city of Yiwu. This project’s in-depth investigation of Yiwu, and its connections to the wider world through networks and flows of people, commodities, and knowledge, will yield ground-breaking perspectives on the precise ways in which trade facilitates the simultaneous exchange of commodities, practices, ideas, and identities. The project is necessarily multi-sited and an inter-disciplinary engaging researchers and theoretical approaches in in anthropology, area studies, business studies, and history; it will also draw on expertise from law, commercial shipping, and international trade policy. (1335 characters)

Mots-clés : cities,capitalism,china,commodities,ethnography,globalization,islam,informal money transfers,markets,online trading,small and medium enterprises  smes,trade,trading networks,trust,yiwu
Projet ERC : MODulATE (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : Sorbonne Université — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Sorbonne U
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 533816.25 €

Tryptophan (Trp) is an essential amino acid required for protein biosynthesis and is also a biochemical precursor of metabolites which have major effects on mammalian physiology. In the gastrointestinal tract, Trp metabolism can follow three major pathways, all of which are under the control of the gut microbiota: (i) the kynurenin pathway in immune and epithelial cells via indoleamine 2,3-Dioxygenase 1, (ii) the serotonin production pathway in enterochromaffin cells via Trp hydroxylase 1 and (iii) the direct use of Trp by the microorganisms of the gut microbiota into several molecules including ligands of the Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor. The end products of these pathways play key roles in modulating the immune response, intestinal and metabolic functions and behaviour. Several diseases which involve the gut microbiota in their pathogenesis are also impacted by Trp metabolite. This suggests that the effect of the microbiota in these diseases could be at least partially mediated by impaired Trp metabolism. We recently observed that impaired Trp metabolism by the gut microbiota is involved in inflammatory bowel disease pathogenesis and preliminary data suggest a potential role in other major human diseases. The aims of the current proposal are (i) to identify the components of the gut microbiota, including both bacteria and fungi, involved in the control of the 3 Trp metabolism pathways in the gut, (ii) to decipher the reciprocal equilibrium between the pathways and to evaluate the potential of its modulation as a therapeutic target, and finally (iii) to assess the relevance of these phenomena in human patients. This challenging project will involve multi-disciplinary aspects, from microbiology to metabolism, inflammation and medicine, the use of multiple cutting edge technologies and translational analysis from mice to human. Beside scientific importance, it will have societal impact by identifying new therapeutic strategies in several human diseases with unmet needs.

Mots-clés : gastroenterology,intestinal homeostasis,microbiota,inflammatory bowel disease