Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : SEA2LAND (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution
Entité participante : Spanish National Research Council — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CSIC
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499485.0 €

All animals share a common origin: a marine one. To conquer land from marine environments, animals changed radically the way they breath, reproduce, move or smell. And they did it multiple times in the history of Earth, with terrestrial animals massively outnumbering aquatic ones. Understanding terrestrialization is therefore key to comprehending animal biodiversity and biological adaptation. Despite the relevance of such an episode, the genetic underpinnings orchestrating terrestrialization in animals are largely unexplored. The project will test the hypothesis that animals are equipped with a highly plastic ‘terrestrialization genetic toolkit’ that allowed their adaptation to the extreme environmental conditions in terrestrial ecosystems. We will focus on two pivotal questions: which genes facilitated life on land and how do they differ between aquatic and terrestrial animals?, and how did animals reshape their genomes to adapt to dry land? Moreover, we will study two case examples of critical processes common to all terrestrial animals -breathing and protection against UV light- to illuminate what molecular and biochemical changes allowed terrestrial animals to breathe and repair their DNA after UV light damage. To achieve this, we will (i) identify the gene repertoire orchestrating the extreme physiological and metabolic changes in aquatic and terrestrial lineages, (ii) characterize the dynamics of these genes to understand the role of gene loss, duplications and horizontal gene transfer, and (3) discover the adaptive mutations that led respiratory pigments and DNA repair proteins to gain their functions via molecular engineering techniques to resurrect their ancestral ‘paleophenotypes’. This project will deliver fundamental insights into a core question in evolutionary biology: what shaped the land animal genetic toolkit. Furthermore, it will provide insights into the evolution of key proteins relevant to human health and industry.

Mots-clés : metazoa,phylogenomics,transcriptomics
Projet ERC : GRAPHENART (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Consorzio Interuniversitario per lo Sviluppo dei Sistemi a Grande Interfase — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : CSGI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 15000.0 €

All art materials are prone to degradation; in particular, the introduction of new creative manufacturing techniques in the 20th century art has yielded artworks with short lifetime expectancy. Fading, yellowing and discolouration are the most common degradation effects that result from the exposition to UV and visible light and oxidizing agents. The result of the degradation is the irreversible alteration of the appearance of contemporary artworks, which is a patrimony of mankind. This PoC project aims to develop innovative, multi-functional graphene-based products (graphene ‘veils’ and inclusions) that provide UV shielding, de-acidification, oxygen and humidity barriers for the protection of old and modern paintings and artworks. Recent advances in the understanding of the mechanical integrity of large graphene membranes as well as of innovative graphene-transfer processes through the current ERC Tailor Graphene has made possible the emergence of this application of strong societal value. The transparent protective graphene veil can be easily removed so it does not constitute an irreversible intervention on the art object. Moreover, for such an application the price of graphene does not hamper its business potential since the quantities are minimal. Two different classes of products are envisaged; CVD graphene membranes directly deposited to artworks for which transparency is required and graphene flakes that will be dispersed to colour paints and varnishes so as to bestow enhanced UV, oxidation and humidity resistance. The latter paves the way to extend this application to the huge market of architectural paints. A multi-disciplinary approach will be pursued for the implementation of this PoC and involves experimentation with CVD graphene sheets of various morphologies and sizes and the dispersion of nanographene as additives in paints. Finally, the development of a Business Plan will be undertaken in collaboration with business developers and patent specialists.

Mots-clés : graphene,wrinkles,artworks protection,uv shielding,oxygen and humidity barrier
Projet ERC : GRAPHENART (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas — Pays : Grèce — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : FORTH;ΙΤΕ
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 119875.0 €

All art materials are prone to degradation; in particular, the introduction of new creative manufacturing techniques in the 20th century art has yielded artworks with short lifetime expectancy. Fading, yellowing and discolouration are the most common degradation effects that result from the exposition to UV and visible light and oxidizing agents. The result of the degradation is the irreversible alteration of the appearance of contemporary artworks, which is a patrimony of mankind. This PoC project aims to develop innovative, multi-functional graphene-based products (graphene ‘veils’ and inclusions) that provide UV shielding, de-acidification, oxygen and humidity barriers for the protection of old and modern paintings and artworks. Recent advances in the understanding of the mechanical integrity of large graphene membranes as well as of innovative graphene-transfer processes through the current ERC Tailor Graphene has made possible the emergence of this application of strong societal value. The transparent protective graphene veil can be easily removed so it does not constitute an irreversible intervention on the art object. Moreover, for such an application the price of graphene does not hamper its business potential since the quantities are minimal. Two different classes of products are envisaged; CVD graphene membranes directly deposited to artworks for which transparency is required and graphene flakes that will be dispersed to colour paints and varnishes so as to bestow enhanced UV, oxidation and humidity resistance. The latter paves the way to extend this application to the huge market of architectural paints. A multi-disciplinary approach will be pursued for the implementation of this PoC and involves experimentation with CVD graphene sheets of various morphologies and sizes and the dispersion of nanographene as additives in paints. Finally, the development of a Business Plan will be undertaken in collaboration with business developers and patent specialists.

Mots-clés : graphene,wrinkles,artworks protection,uv shielding,oxygen and humidity barrier
Projet ERC : Clock Mechanics (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : The Francis Crick Institute — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 14506.76 €

All forms of life adjust themselves to the daily rhythms of their environments using endogenous oscillators collectively referred to as circadian clocks. Peripheral and central body clocks exist, which both require extrinsic information (e.g. light or temperature changes) to keep in sync with the geophysical cycle (entrainment). In addition, intrinsic cues (e.g. activity levels) have been linked to clock entrainment. Recently, we could show that activation of proprioceptors is sufficient to entrain the central clock of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Proprioceptors are mechanosensors that monitor the positions, and relative movements, of an animal’s own body parts. The existence of proprioceptive entrainment pathways has significant implications; it implies that an animal’s ‘clock time’ is computed by integrating, and weighting, various external and internal conditions, suggesting the existence of external and internal time. Using Drosophila, I will investigate the relationship between mechanosensory and circadian systems in a dual, and bidirectional, approach. The project’s first aim is to dissect the neurobiological bases of proprioceptive clock entrainment (i) identifying the specific stimulus requirements for effective entrainment, (ii) determining its mechanosensory pathways and, in a combined computational and experimental strategy, (iii) quantifying the precise contributions of an animal’s activity to its sense of time. The project’s second aim, in turn, is to unravel the roles of the clock, and clock genes, for the function of mechanosensory systems. Previous studies have linked the clock to noise vulnerability in mammalian ears, and clock genes to regeneration in avian ears. Our own preliminary data reveal severe mechanosensory defects in flies mutant for core clock genes. I will use the Drosophila ear as a unifying model to analyse the specific roles of the clock, and clock genes, for the function of mechanotransducer systems.

Mots-clés : circadian entrainment,mechanosensation,auditory transduction
Projet ERC : BactInd (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution
Entité participante : University of Zurich — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UZH
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1994981.0 €

All levels of life entail cooperation and conflict. Genes cooperate to build up a functional genome, which can yet be undermined by selfish genetic elements. Humans and animals cooperate to build up societies, which can yet be subverted by cheats. There is a long-standing interest among biologists to comprehend the tug-of-war between cooperation and conflict. Recently, research on bacteria was successful in identifying key factors that can tip the balance in favour or against cooperation. Bacteria cooperate through the formation of protective biofilms, cell-to-cell communication, and the secretion of shareable public goods. However, the advantage of bacteria being fast replicating units, easily cultivatable in high numbers, is also their disadvantage: they are small and imperceptible, such that measures of cooperation typically rely on averaged responses across millions of cells. Thus, we still know very little about bacterial cooperation at the biological relevant scale: the individual cell level. Here, I present research using the secretion of public goods in the opportunistic human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, to tackle this issue. I will explore new dimensions of bacterial cooperation by asking whether bacteria engage in collective-decision making to find optimal group-level solutions; whether bacteria show division of labour to split up work efficiently; and whether bacteria can distinguish between trustworthy and cheating partners. The proposed research will make two significant contributions. First, it will reveal whether bacteria engage in complex forms of cooperation (collective decision-making, division of labour, partner recognition), which have traditionally been associated with higher organisms. Second, it will provide insights into the evolutionary stability of cooperation – key knowledge for designing therapies that interfere with virulence-inducing public goods in infections, and the design of stable public-good based remediation processes.

Mots-clés : bacterial cooperation,division of labour,collective decision making,cell to cell interactions
Projet ERC : CryoProtect (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : University of Leeds — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 149926.0 €

All pharmaceutical, chemical and cosmetic products have to undergo rigorous toxicity testing before going to market. In the past, this was often done through testing with animals, but this approach has been in rapid decline. The alternative is testing of products for toxicity against mammalian cells in multi-well plates. This technique is very important in the pharmaceutical industry where early detection of drug toxicity can reduce the cost of bringing drugs to market. Testing against hepatocytes (liver cells) is critically important, but these cells are difficult to cryopreserve in multi-well plates. At present they have to be shipped globally in a fresh format, presenting major logistical challenges, and then used within days, often with less than ideal results in terms of cell uniformity and test reproducibility. In CryoProtect, I will develop a means of cryopreserving cells within multi-well plates allowing them be shipped to laboratories around the world and thawed only when they are needed. In the absence of ice nucleants, aqueous cell suspensions can supercool well below the ice melting point which often results in cell death. I have already pioneered the use of feldspar as an ice nucleant in cryopreservation. However, feldspar alone is not enough to cryopreserve cells in multi-well plates. In this PoC application I propose to build on a discovery related to our work on ice nucleation by sea spray aerosol, published in Nature. We can substantially improve the ice nucleating ability of feldspar by adding ammonium ions to the solution in which cells are suspended prior to freezing (this solution is called the cryoprotectant solution) leading to enhanced survival rates of hepatocytes. This PoC grant is needed in order to optimise the composition of the new cryoprotectant formulation for specific applications, trials and testing, producing technical marketing materials, assessment of significant markets and the development of an evidence based business plan.

Mots-clés : ice nucleation,ice nucleant,cryopreservation,cloud,toxicology testing,cryoprotectant,feldspar
Projet ERC : PainCells (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Karolinska Institutet — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : KI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2443952.5 €

Almost 20% of the population has an ongoing pain problem. Pain is caused by a complex recruitment of different types of sensory neurons with different response-profiles and hence, the integrated response of an assembly of different neuronal types results in pain. Due to technical limitations, a system-wide approach to resolve the complexity of cell types and their involvement in the development of pain has yet not been tried. PainCells will first identify and classify sensory neuron types by single-cell RNA seq in rodent and non-human primate. Based on the new classification we will determine the cellular basis for transduction of somatic sensation by developing enabling technologies allowing an activity-based Cre-dependent permanent labeling and identification by RNA-seq the exact cell types and hence, also neuronal assemblies active during particular types of pain. These assemblies will thereafter be silenced, ablated or artificially activated to functionally determine the role of these circuits in pain disorders. This work will for the first time reveal the full complexity of different cell types engaged in particular types of pain and unravel by activity-based mouse genetics the role of that these play in pain disorders. Thus, PainCells will reveal system-wide principles of coding pain in the nervous system. PainCells will also address the role of terminal glial cells in the skin. This ignored cell type has in preliminary results been shown to respond to and transmit painful stimuli to primary sensory neurons. We will ascertain the role of terminal glial cells in the skin as pain initiating cells and in pain disorders. The discovery that glial cells in addition to sensory neurons represent pain receptive cells should fundamentally change the pain field. Overall, this proposal takes a new system-wide strategy in that will affect development of new pain managing drugs, a field that has made little clinical advance the past century.

Mots-clés : single cell rna sequencing,nociception,sensory subtypes
Projet ERC : ALPHA (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : Institute of Science and Technology Austria — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ISTA
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1678432.0 €

Alpha shapes were invented in the early 80s of last century, and their implementation in three dimensions in the early 90s was at the forefront of the exact arithmetic paradigm that enabled fast and correct geometric software. In the late 90s, alpha shapes motivated the development of the wrap algorithm for surface reconstruction, and of persistent homology, which was the starting point of rapidly expanding interest in topological algorithms aimed at data analysis questions. We now see alpha shapes, wrap complexes, and persistent homology as three aspects of a larger theory, which we propose to fully develop. This viewpoint was a long time coming and finds its clear expression within a generalized version of discrete Morse theory. This unified framework offers new opportunities, including (I) the adaptive reconstruction of shapes driven by the cavity structure; (II) the stochastic analysis of all aspects of the theory; (III) the computation of persistence of dense data, both in scale and in depth; (IV) the study of long-range order in periodic and near-periodic point configurations. These capabilities will significantly deepen as well as widen the theory and enable new applications in the sciences. To gain focus, we concentrate on low-dimensional applications in structural molecular biology and particle systems.

Mots-clés : computational geometry,computational topology,algorithms,alpha shapes,persistent homology
Projet ERC : NEURAL AS (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems
Entité participante : Centre for Genomic Regulation — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CRG;CRG-CERCA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1498852.0 €

Alternative splicing (AS) is the largest contributor to transcriptomic diversification in metazoans. In particular, mirroring their unparalleled morphological and cellular complexity, vertebrate brains show the highest levels of regulated AS known in nature. However, the functions of most of these alternative transcripts, and the evolutionary impact that the increased transcriptional complexity has had on the evolution of the vertebrate brain are still widely unexplored. In this project, we will investigate the functions and evolutionary impact of neural AS in vertebrates. We will focus on neural-specific alternative exons that are highly conserved across vertebrate groups (suggesting functional importance), but that are not conserved in invertebrates, and are thus vertebrate-specific genomic novelties. We will term these exons Vertebrate- and Neural-specific Alternatively Spliced (VN-AS) exons. Through a combination of bioinformatics, experimental manipulation in models species, and systems-level network analysis, we aim to: (i) Comprehensively identify VN-AS exons, and study their regulation during vertebrate neurogenesis and nervous system development, using RNA-seq and comparative genomics; (ii) Probe the phenotypic impact of VN-AS exons on vertebrate nervous systems, using the CRISPR-Cas technology for genome editing; and (iii) Investigate how VN-AS exons rewire protein-protein interaction networks in vertebrate neurons – an emergent molecular function for AS –, and whether this rewiring underlies novel functions of VN-AS exons in the vertebrate brains. This project will thus deliver fundamental insight into two major unanswered questions: (i) what are the functions of transcriptomic diversification, and (ii) how does transcriptomic diversification impact organismal evolution. Our results will fill a large gap of knowledge in our current understanding of brain evolution and development, providing a complementary angle to traditional gene expression studies.
Projet ERC : NARIoS (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and communication engineering
Entité participante : Ghent University — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UGent
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2482750.0 €

Although Silicon Photonics, i.e. using mature technologies from the CMOS-industry for realizing complex photonic ICs, progressed enormously, with industrial uptake by the biggest electronics manufactures, its real breakthrough, in e.g. large volume consumer applications or very short interconnects, is hampered by its lack of a true waferscale optical source. Combining aspect-ratio trapping, to suppress defects, and nano-ridge engineering, to shape the resulting material, we have developed a powerful platform to integrate direct bandgap III-V semiconductors on standard silicon wafers, using truly waferscale processes. The exceptionally high quality of this material was confirmed through morphological studies, gain and lifetime measurements and the demonstration of lasing under optical pumping. For practical applications, electrical injection is key though, which thus far has been elusive as the dimensions of the resulting GaAs/InGaAs nano-ridges are too small to directly apply electrical contacts without introducing unacceptable losses. Therefore, NARIoS' primary objective is to propose device concepts that overcome the trade-off between optical confinement and efficient current injection. We aim at the demonstration of electrically injected microcavity lasers for low-power applications and the demonstration of a novel class of mW-lasers with in-plane or out-of-plane emission, exploiting the possibility to grow highly uniform arrays of these nano-ridges. Next, we aim to demonstrate single photon emission from long-wavelength InAs-quantum dots grown on the nano-ridge platform, eventually integrated in a suitable microcavity. These device-oriented objectives will be complemented by two transversal objectives: development and extensive characterisation of InGaAs nano-ridges for extending the lasing wavelength and exploiting novel concepts from recent literature to design lasers resilient to optical feedback and/or exhibiting lasing in a single coherent spatial mode.