Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : Mito-FerroQuest (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and R egeneration
Entité participante : Helmholtz Zentrum München — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HMGU
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Mitochondria serve as the epicenter of cellular metabolism. Their dynamic communication with other compartments within the cell ensures proper cellular function. My recent work reveals how mitochondria communicate with the plasma membrane (PM) to transport a redox-active lipid Coenzyme Q (Ubiquinone or CoQ). This communication is crucial for inhibiting a form of iron-mediated cell death called ferroptosis. Notably, CoQ is exclusively synthesized within the mitochondria and plays a pivotal role in maintaining the mitochondrial respiratory chain, as well as other metabolic pathways, such as pyrimidine synthesis, fatty acid oxidation and proline metabolism. My work highlights that cellular defense is primarily orchestrated from the mitochondria and surprisingly dependent on a molecule—CoQ—that is indispensable for mitochondrial function. This work shows that mitochondria—known as cell death inducers—protect cells from ferroptosis and opens several key questions that I will address in Mito-FerroQuest, including: i) Which proteins and metabolic pathways within the mitochondria dictate whether CoQ should be exported or retained within the mitochondria? ii) Do mitochondria have other ways to defend against ferroptosis, or is CoQ export their only defense? iii) Does mitochondrial communication extend beyond the PM and involve interactions with other organelles, such as the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), in protecting cells against ferroptosis? Answers to these questions will enhance our understanding of mitochondrial strategies in ferroptosis, potentially paving the way for new therapies in conditions where ferroptosis is implicated, like neurodegenerative disorders. Mito-FerroQuest sets the stage for my overarching goal of exploring ferroptosis in diseases with compromised mitochondrial function, such as Leigh syndrome, with the aim to assess its potential as a therapeutic target.

Mots-clés : mitochondria,ferroptosis,coenzyme q,metabolism
Projet ERC : PAX (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental Constituents of Matter
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499613.0 €

Numerous experimental observations have shown that the Standard Model is not complete. Precision measurements in quantum systems are one of the privileged frontiers for searching for new physics, as new particles may couple to atoms, provoking tiny changes in atomic structure that can be measured with state-of-the-art methods. Such searches are founded on an accurate understanding of quantum electrodynamics (QED), the field theory that describes the interaction between light and charged particles. While QED is well understood for light systems like the hydrogen atom where agreement between theory and experiment have been achieved up to third-order interactions with the quantum vacuum, for high-Z atoms in the strong Coulomb field regime, the theory remains untested beyond first-order interactions. This is due to both experimental complications, and theoretical uncertainties linked to unknown nuclear properties. I propose a new approach for testing strong-field QED via the x-ray spectroscopy of antiprotonic atoms. In these systems, orders of magnitude higher Coulomb fields can be obtained, acting like a magnifying glass for QED effects that become easier to measure. Using transitions between Rydberg states, uncertainties from nuclear properties can be avoided and two orders of magnitude sensitivity can be gained with respect to the best current experiments, making testing strong-field QED finally possible for a broad range of atomic species.  The realization of this project relies on the novel combination of two new technologies: slow antiproton beams at CERN, and quantum sensing x-ray detectors. The compatibility of these two requires new developments that will lead to a dedicated precision x-ray spectroscopy platform for antiprotonic atoms, with transverse applications beyond QED in nuclear and new physics searches.

Mots-clés : strong field quantum electrodynamics,antimatter
Projet ERC : DarkCellFader (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Integrative B iology : from Genes and Genomes to S ystems
Entité participante : Institut für Molekulare Biotechnologie — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : IMBA
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

At the onset of mammalian life, the first lineage specification decision is made where embryonic cells opt to become either part of the placenta or the future body. Proper regulation of this choice is crucial for subsequent development. However, we don’t know how the transcription program and 3D genome architecture arise, interconnect, and are controlled to determine the fate of each cell in a developing embryo. Recent studies, including my work, suggest that in addition to canonical mRNA-coding genes, RNAs from the “dark” parts of the genome (e.g., transposons, repeats, long-non-coding RNAs) play a significant role during these events, yet how specific classes of RNA regulate gene expression and nuclear architecture post fertilization remains elusive. The main aim of my proposal is to understand the interrelationship between 3D genome organization and the transcriptome across early development and to identify novel factors that lead to the first cell-fate decision and concomitant decrease in cell potency. Recent technical advances, which I co-developed, enabled simultaneous measurement of 3D genome organization and the transcriptome, and facilitated large-scale functional screens in early mammalian embryos. Thus, I now propose to generate spatiotemporal maps of 3D DNA and RNA organization from early mouse embryos at single-cell resolution (Obj.1) to build a complete picture of the relationships between nuclear architecture and emerging cell-type specific transcriptome that drive early cell fate choices. I will combine these data with large-scale in vivo perturbations targeting protein coding genes (Obj.2) and dark genome RNAs (Obj.3) to identify key inducers/regulators of lineage specification and to determine molecular mechanisms governing cell-state transitions. The proposed research will help us to control, correct, and eventually employ early stages of embryonic development and their high cell potency in vitro in reproductive medicine and stem cell research.

Mots-clés : early embryonic development,dark genome rnas,3d genome organization,gene expression,single cell omics,cell potency
Projet ERC : GENDEREDCLIMATEMIG (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1495733.0 €

The World Bank estimates that climate change will force 216 million people to leave their homes by 2050. Using UN data, the Australian think tank IEP calculates that 1.2 billion people risk being displaced by 2050 because of ecological threats. Beyond alarmist projections of which we need to be wary, and as a matter of fact, we know little about the articulation of internal and international climate-induced migration because once those on the move cross borders they become labour migrants, asylum seekers or undocumented migrants, with climate-related causes rendered invisible. In the absence of any internationally recognized status for climate migrants, it remains unclear what proportion of international migration flows are also caused, at least partially, by changes in people’s natural environments that relate to climate change. Importantly, we know even less about the gendered inequalities that permeate these forms of mobility. To fill this crucial gap, GENDEREDCLIMATEMIG explores climate-induced internal and international migration, and their articulation, from a gendered perspective and through an interdisciplinary, comparative and participatory methodology. This project will produce highly informative ethnographic case-studies in 3 middle-income countries and regional migration hubs (Mexico, Morocco and Malaysia) along with a multi-sited and gender-sensitive enquiry into the current state of climate migration governance at international (e.g. Platform on Disaster Displacement) and national levels, exploring original national policy initiatives (e.g. in Norway, Peru and Kenya). The qualitative and participatory methodology of this research promises to lend unique insights into the decision-making processes, trajectories and lives of climate migrants through a gendered lens. GENDEREDCLIMATEMIG will advance our understanding of the under-researched climate-migration-gender nexus while carving out more space for migrants’ voices.

Mots-clés : migration,gender,climate change
Projet ERC : GAGARIN (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : Université de Leyde — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

This project will develop several aspects of a theory of real multiplication (RM), seeking to be a counterpart of the theory of complex multiplication (CM) discovered in the 19th century. Classical CM theory is famed for its beauty and elegance, and is important in a variety of contexts. For instance: (1) in the classical era, it arose in the context of explicit class field theory. This feature is the subject of Kronecker's Jugendtraum and Hilbert's 12th problem, (2) in the modern era, it has been instrumental in proving known cases of the Birch-Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture, notably the results of Gross-Zagier which are a main theme of this proposal, (3) it has been used in elliptic and hyperelliptic curve cryptography, in cryptosystems based on supersingular isogeny graphs, one of the front runners for a secure post-quantum international standard. The objectives are to develop analytic, computational, and geometric aspects of such an RM theory, and address the full scope of these features. The theory is based on the notion of arithmetic intersections of geodesics, and this project gives a new approach towards RM theory based on a notion of p-adic weak harmonic Maass forms, and p-adic height pairings of geodesics attached to real quadratic fields. Emphasis will lie on analytic aspects (p-adic Borcherds lifts and p-adic mock modular forms), computational aspects (development of user-friendly software for computations in RM theory), and geometric aspects (RM cycles on Shimura curves, and applications to the Birch-Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture).

Mots-clés : modular forms,complex multiplication,p adic methods,elliptic curves
Projet ERC : ImBod (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Université de Leyde — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499700.0 €

The Shiʿi Imams played a key role in early Islam. Revered scholars descended from the Prophet Muḥammad, they posed an existential threat to the legitimacy of the ruling caliphs in the 8th and 9th century CE. Their leadership defined the quietist yet oppositional Imami Shiʿi community scattered throughout the Islamic empire. Imami Shiʿism was a key part of the turbulent thesis and antithesis which formed Islam, and it remains greatly influential until today. Remarkably, there is no comprehensive history of the Imamate. There are a number of reasons for this, central among which are that scholarship on Imami Shiʿism has approached it as a doctrinal and intellectual phenomenon. However, religious groups are also fundamentally social phenomena. ImBod will result in the first comprehensive history of the Shiʿi Imamate. It will position the Imamate as a social phenomenon, framing it as an interaction between two aspects which are rarely explicitly theorised: the Imams, and the Imami community who recognised them. ImBod will identify and study the key spheres in which the Imams and the Imami community operated, including the Imams’ household, elite Arab clans (especially the Prophet’s family and the dynasties of the caliphs), the network of Imamic agents, the scholars, and the communities who came to be associated with Shiʿi Islam through kinship, conversion and migration. ImBod will map out overlapping networks of interaction across these spheres and identify key actors and institutions responsible for mediating and performing the Imamate in the community. ImBod will not conceive of the Imamate as an essence, but as a set of social processes, some, but not all, instigated and controlled by the Imams themselves. Crucially, ImBod will study these processes as performed spatially and embodied materially by actors and physical objects linked to the Imams. ImBod will enrich Islamic history by providing a paradigm for studying how religious authority was embedded in society.
Projet ERC : TERGAP (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : Université de Leyde — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Terrorist groups find ways to adapt to changes in their environment to stay relevant and powerful. This project offers new insights into this phenomenon by developing a more nuanced theoretical strategic framework and using quantitative methods to examine how terrorist groups survive, and sometimes thrive, despite efforts to combat them. This is accomplished by integrating political psychology, social movement, and terrorism research, and applying big data analytics and machine learning common in brain sciences, natural sciences, and bioinformatics to identify adaptation patterns in terrorist attack target selection and brutality.  First, this project frames terrorism as a recruitment tool for manipulating potential supporters’ psychological needs, like vengeance. Repressive government actions lead to desires for vengeance and thus create opportunities for acts of terrorism specifically attacking the repressive actor to signal a terrorist group’s capability for fulfilling this psychological need. As such, we should observe strategic short-term changes in terrorism following government repression in the data. This is tested using Event Coincidence Analysis, a method for identifying synchronization patterns and trigger rates from one event to another.  Second, because terrorist groups can also adapt to changes in counterterrorism, this project proposes two data collection efforts that enable big data analytics to identify adaptation patterns. The first focuses on counterterrorism policies using government reports and covers a global sample of countries. The second creates a novel large-N cross-national counter-terrorist actions dataset using natural language processing machine coding of news articles. Hierarchical clustering analyses will then be used to detect patterns of terrorist group adaptive behaviours and build predictive models that anticipate adaptation. This has implications to improve counterterrorism and make it more proactive, focused, and effective.

Mots-clés : terrorism,counterterrorism,repression,vengeance,big data,recruitment
Projet ERC : BECACO (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : Université de Leyde — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1498695.0 €

The BECACO project applies a novel multidisciplinary framework to studying the provenance of ethnographic and archaeological collections. Moving away from the current focus in provenance research on single objects, collectors, or institutions, the aim of the project is to reconceptualize provenance as the large-scale study of the socio-politico-historical conjunctures that led to the translocation of cultural material. To do so, it introduces the concept of Art World Patterns, an expansion and reframing of the idea of Art Worlds (Becker 2008[1982]).  These patterns will be identified through an innovative combination of various data-driven methodologies. By applying quantitative analyses, network analysis, and data mining on a large corpus of provenance data, the project will explore the promises and limitations of different data-driven approaches in the context of large-scale ethnographic/archaeological provenance research. Through this process, the project will devise new models for provenance research in ethnographic and archaeological museums.  These conceptual and methodological advances will be mobilized through the study of Indigenous Latin American material from 12 museums in 9 countries. The project will create a ground-breaking diachronic, international, and cross-institutional understanding of the collecting of Indigenous Latin American material in Europe. In doing so, the BECACO team will reconstruct how – through the formation of collections – the Indigenous Latin American Art World as it existed in Europe between 1850-2000 constructed a discourse of art, aesthetics, and academic research that shaped how Indigenous Latin America is represented and understood in Europe until today.

Mots-clés : latin american archaeology,latin american ethnography,collection history,provenance research,art market studies
Projet ERC : SynTra (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Université de Leyde — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1851328.0 €

The overarching goal of SynTra is the engineering of synthetic transcription factors (STFs) that can enter cells and activate or deactivate specific genes. Traditional drugs target only a small fraction of the human proteome, while compounds that can be programmed to target specific genes could address many relevant disease mechanisms, right at their basis. In aim 1, I will engineer STFs that can (1) bind to any given DNA base pair triplet and (2) enter cells. To achieve these goals, I will develop design rules for preparing minimized ?-helical scaffolds derived from zinc finger protein domains. Via peptide stapling, I will stabilize the structure of these STFs and boost their cell internalization. I will use a high throughput combinatorial screening methodology developed by me to optimize the STFs? properties. In aim 2, I will prepare multimeric STFs (consisting of multiple monomeric STFs from aim 1) that can target unique genes within the entire human genome with high specificity. I will obtain them with a combination of solid-phase and bioconjugation strategies. With a hexameric STF (recognizing 18 DNA base pairs), I will target a specific gene promoter and trigger ?-globin production as a promising strategy for sickle cell disease treatment. In aim 3, I will use STFs to disrupt cancer-related liquid-liquid phase-separated transcriptional condensates. Transcriptional condensates rely on a network between transcription factors, DNA, and coactivators, and they play a crucial role in gene transcription. With STFs, I will displace the oncogenic transcription factor MYC from its DNA binding site. I expect this interference to lead to a condensate disruption and to downregulation of oncogenic MYC-dependent transcription. SynTra will deliver powerful and practical synthetic tools for studying and targeting disease mechanisms. Researchers at the interface of biology and chemistry will use the STFs developed in SynTra, for basic research and drug development.

Mots-clés : chemical protein synthesis peptide synthesis synthetic peptide modification cell penetrating peptides transcription factors
Projet ERC : R-ELEVATION (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Biotechnology and Biosystems E ngineering
Entité participante : Université de Leyde — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2364101.0 €

Plant diseases are widespread and constitute a major threat to food production. Understanding the molecular mechanisms by which plants resist pathogens is essential to design better strategies for protecting crops from diseases. Strict regulation of plant defense gene expression plays a critical role in establishing an effective and fine-tuned immune response; their insufficient expression leads to diseases, while their overexpression can result in autoimmunity and severe fitness penalties. My own recent work using systems biology approaches reveals hidden components inferred by defense gene regulatory networks as essential players in plant immunity. The next challenge lies in establishing how the recognition of pathogens by plant immune receptors is converted to changes in defense gene expression and results in effective immunity. In particular, it is unknown how defense gene regulatory mechanisms are dynamically regulated, whether the mechanisms are shared by different plant species, and how different types of plant cells respond to pathogen attacks. My long-term goal is to develop robust tools to control plant pathogens. To tackle these challenging questions, the R-ELEVATION program addresses three core objectives: 1. Determine how master transcription factors regulate the expression of defense genes. 2. Identify and characterize new and conserved regulatory components during immune activation. 3. Elucidate and compare cell-type-specific gene regulatory networks between resistant and susceptible plants. With my team, I aim to advance the fundamental understanding of dynamic gene regulatory mechanisms during plant immune activation that are conserved in different plant species. I additionally aim to revolutionize plant protection strategies at the cell-type-specific level. Translating our results into crop plants will enable the development of management strategies, including selectable traits for plant breeding, for more durable and fine-tunable resistance.

Mots-clés : plant innate immunity,transcriptional regulation,chromatin accessibility,gene expression,transcription factors,protein protein interactions,histone remodellers,transcriptomics,rna seq,atac seq,gene regulatory networks,bioinformatics,statistics,mathematical modeling,multi omics,comparative network analysis,next generation sequencing,single cell technologies,single nucleus rna seq,single nucleus atac seq,time series datasets