Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Deformation Spaces of Geometric Structures (GEOMETRICSTRUCTURES)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Mathematics
Countries involved: Germany
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-01-01
End date: 2020-03-31
Duration (months): 75.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1570327.2
EU funding (EUR): 1570327.2
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Moduli spaces of flat bundles and representation varieties play a prominent role in various areas of mathematics. Historically such spaces first arose in the study of systems of analytic differential equations. Closely related, and in fact locally homeomorphic, are deformation spaces of locally homogeneous geometric structures. Such deformation spaces often arise as solutions to basic geometric problems, and their global properties provide powerful topological invariants, in particular for three- and four-dimensional manifolds. Due to the ubiquity of these spaces, methods and viewpoints from various areas of mathematics such as dynamical systems, algebraic geometry, gauge theory, representation theory, partial differential equations, number theory and complex analysis can be combined, and their interplay gives rise to the richness of this subject. In recent year there has also been an increasing interaction with theoretical physics, which has been fruitful for both sides. In recent years the deformation theory of geometric structures has received revived attention due to new developments, which involve in a deeper way the connections to Lie theory and gauge theory. Unexpectedly, many new examples of deformation spaces of geometric structures appeared. Two such developments are Higher Teichmueller theory and Anosov representations of hyperbolic groups, which generalize classical Teichmueller theory and the theory of quasi-Fuchsian representations to the context of Lie groups of higher rank. The goal of the proposal is to understand the fine structure and internal geometry of deformation spaces of geometric structures, and to further develop the structure theory of discrete subgroups in higher rank Lie groups. Of particular interest are deformation spaces with appear in the connection with higher Teichmueller theory, because they are expected to be of similar mathematical significance as classical Teichmueller space.
Active Mechanisms of Cell Selection: From Cell Competition to Cell Fitness. (CELLFITNESS)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Cellular and Developmental Biology
Countries involved: Switzerland
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-06-01
End date: 2020-05-31
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1968062.0
EU funding (EUR): 1968062.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

The molecular mechanisms that mediate cell competition, cell fitness and cell selection is gaining interest. With innovative approaches, molecules and ground-breaking hypothesis, this field of research can help understand several biological processes such as development, cancer and tissue degeneration. The project has 3 clear and ambitious objectives: 1. We propose to identify all the key genes mediating cell competition and their molecular mechanisms. In order to reach this objective we will use data from two whole genome screens in Drosophila where we have identified 7 key genes. By the end of this CoG grant, we should have no big gaps in our knowledge of how slow dividing cells are recognised and eliminated in Drosophila. 2. In addition, we will explore how general the cell competition pathways are and how they can impact biomedical research, with a focus in cancer and tissue degeneration. The interest in cancer is based on experiments in Drosophila and mice where we and others have found that an active process of cell selection determines tumour growth. Preliminary results suggest that the pathways identified do not only play important roles in the elimination of slow dividing cells, but also during cancer initiation and progression. 3. We will further explore the role of cell competition in neuronal selection, specially during neurodegeneration, development of the retina and adult brain regeneration in Drosophila. This proposal is of an interdisciplinary nature because it takes a basic cellular mechanism (the genetic pathways that select cells within tissues) and crosses boundaries between different fields of research: development, cancer, regeneration and tissue degeneration. In this ERC CoG proposal, we are committed to continue our efforts from basic science to biomedical approaches. The phenomena of cell competition and its participating genes have the potential to discover novel biomarkers and therapeutic strategies against cancer and tissue degeneration.

Keywords: cell competition,drosophila,adult neurogenesis,cell fitness,supercompetitors,cancer
Crystal channeling to extract a high energy hadron beam from an accelerator (CRYSBEAM)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Fundamental Constituents of Matter
Countries involved: Italy
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-05-01
End date: 2019-04-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1989746.0
EU funding (EUR): 1989746.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

A new generation of parasitic beam extraction of high energy particles from an accelerator is proposed in CRYSBEAM. Instead of massive magnetic kickers, bent thin crystals trapping particles within the crystal lattice planes are used. This type of beam manipulation opens new fields of investigation of fundamental interactions between particles and of coherent interactions between particles and matter. An experiment in connection to Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays study in Earth’s high atmosphere can be conducted. Several TeV energy protons or ions are deflected towards a chosen target by the bent lattice planes only when the lattice planes are parallel to the incoming particles direction. The three key ingredients of CRYSBEAM are: - a goniometer based on piezoelectric devices that orients a bent finely-polished low-miscut silicon crystal with a high resolution and repeatability, monitoring its position with synthetic diamond sensors. Novel procedures in crystal manufacturing & testing and cutting-edge mechanical solutions for motion technology in vacuum are developed; - a silica screen that measures the deflected particles via Cherenkov radiation emission in micrometric optical waveguides. These are obtained with an ultra-short laser micro-machining technique as for photonic devices used in quantum optics and quantum computing. The screen is a direct beam-imaging detector for a high radiation dose environment; - a smart absorber, which simulates the Earth’s atmosphere, where particles are smashed and secondary showers are initiated. This sets the path to measure hadronic cross sections at an energy relevant for cosmic rays investigation. The R&D for the various components of such a system are carried out within this project and direct tests at CERN Super Proton Synchrotron to be performed prior to the final installation in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN are proposed. A new concept of particle accelerator operations will be finally set in place.

Keywords: crystal channeling,cherenkov radiation,beam position monitor,ultra high energy cosmic rays,piezoelectric effect
Quantum-Degenerate Strontium: Mixtures, Molecules, and Many-Body Physics (QUANTSTRO)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Fundamental Constituents of Matter
Countries involved: Netherlands
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-04-01
End date: 2019-03-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1799148.0
EU funding (EUR): 1799148.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

In 2009 my research team created the first Bose-Einstein condensate of strontium. This breakthrough is the foundation of my research program, which will investigate quantum many-body phenomena with a focus on quantum magnetism and physics related to the quantum Hall effect. We are especially interested in studying unusual, strongly correlated quantum states, among them states with topological order. The unique properties of strontium make it ideally suited to follow four different approaches to this physics. 1) We will immerse our quantum gas into artificial gauge fields, which e.g. let neutral atoms behave as if they were charged particles in a strong magnetic field. These fields will allow us to study quantum Hall states or topological insulators. 2) We will study SU(N) magnetism, which is an unusual form of magnetism not found in condensed matter, but of high interest for theory. A high degree of frustration can lead to spin liquid behaviour. 3) We will use sympathetic Pomeranchuk cooling of a potassium spin mixture by fermionic strontium to reach low entropy quantum phases. Our goal is to study magnetically ordered states and frustrated antiferromagnetism. 4) We will create RbSr ground-state molecules, which are polar, open-shell molecules. They will allow us to engineer unique quantum-many body systems with long-range interactions, e.g. lattice-spin models that can support topological states. We will pursue this research not only on our existing Rb/Sr quantum gas mixture apparatus, but we will construct a new K/Sr quantum gas microscope. This machine will be very valuable to explore exotic quantum states. The properties of strontium will enable an innovative single-atom detection method based on shelving in a metastable state and quench cooling, which will allow us to take internal state-resolved, 3D, or super-resolution images of the lattice gas.

Keywords: quantum degenerate strontium,quantum magnetism,quantum hall physics,topological quantum phases,artificial gauge fields,quantum gas microscope,dipolar interactions,polar open-shell molecules
Metagenome and Bariatric Surgery - New Avenues to Treat Metabolic Disease (METABASE)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Physiology, Pathophysiology and Endocrinology
Countries involved: Sweden
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-11-01
End date: 2019-10-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2000000.0
EU funding (EUR): 2000000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Obesity and associated metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes are increasing worldwide and are the result of complex gene-environment interactions. Recent studies indicate that socio-demographic and environmental factors are more important for disease development than genetics, and we and others have demonstrated that the gut microbiota can be considered an environmental factor that contributes to obesity. Effective treatment for obesity remains a challenge and bariatric surgery is the only available therapy that is proven to maintain weight loss. Intriguingly, bariatric surgery also improves glucose metabolism, but the underlying molecular mechanisms for this beneficial effect are unclear. An altered gut microbiota has been linked to metabolic diseases and pilot studies indicate that the gut microbiota is also altered upon bariatric surgery; these findings suggest that some of the improved metabolic features following bariatric surgery may be mediated by altered composition of the gut microbiota. The overall goal of this proposal is to integrate clinical research with mechanistic studies in mice to determine if and how the gut microbiota mediates the beneficial effects of bariatric surgery. We will define how bariatric surgery alters the gut metagenome in humans, both at a species and at a functional level. By transferring the fecal microbiota from these patients before and after surgery to germ-free mice, we will determine if an altered gut microbiota directly modulates host metabolism. Finally, we will establish surgical methods in germ-free mice to directly test whether the beneficial effects observed following surgery require a microbiota. Increased understanding of these mechanisms may provide the basis for non-surgical treatments based on supplementation of novel probiotics to treat metabolic diseases. Follow-up work in larger clinical cohorts may also indicate how patients can be stratified to determine who would benefit the most from bariatric surgery.

Keywords: bariatric surgery,gut microbiota,metagenome,type 2 diabetes,obesity
Optogenetic control of cellular behaviour by allosteric ribonucleic acid assemblies (OPTORIBO)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Medical Biotechnology
Countries involved: Germany
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-05-01
End date: 2019-04-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1992438.0
EU funding (EUR): 1992438.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Light-sensitive channel proteins have attracted much attention as functional molecules, as they possess unique conformations and functions depending on their respective irradiation states. Embedding these proteins in heterogeneous cellular frameworks enabled to gain light-control of cellular and in particular neuronal behaviour. However to date, optogenetic solutions that address endogenous, intracellular biomolecules in a universal fashion remain elusive. The project will apply design and selection strategies aiming at nucleic acid molecules that can be controlled by irradiation with light and which we have developed in preliminary studies. This will now be taken significant steps forward by generating modular allosteric ribonucleic acid (RNA) assemblies that respond to light. These assemblies provide a generic solution and represent long-sought methods to complement the optogenetic toolbox. The aim of this project is the generation of allosteric molecules built from at least two RNA domains; one domain that binds to a soluble photoreceptor protein (PRP) in a light-dependent manner and a second RNA domain, whose protein inhibiting function in turn depends on the binding state of the PRP-recognizing part. We will construct light-responsive allosteric RNA assemblies that can be ubiquitously used in cells and in vivo, independent of specific model organisms, for optogenetic control and spatiotemporal analysis of endogenous, intracellular biomolecule function. The project is highly interdisciplinary and will open novel routes for biomolecule analysis in cells and in vivo. It has implications ranging from life sciences to optogenetics, and from combinatorial biochemistry to synthetic biology. As these new tools will be applicable by any scientist to analyse protein function at high spatiotemporal resolution, the project bears an enormous innovative potential.

Keywords: aptamers,sirna,rna assemblies,allosteric control,photochemistry,riboswitches,photoreceptor proteins,lov,optogenetics,optochemical genetics,map kinase
Apartheid -- The Global Itinerary: South African Cultural Formations in Transnational Circulation, 1948-1990 (APARTHEID-STOPS)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Cultures and Cultural Production
Countries involved: Israel
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-05-01
End date: 2019-04-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1861238.0
EU funding (EUR): 1861238.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

This proposal proceeds from an anomaly. Apartheid routinely breached the separation that it names. Whereas the South African regime was deeply isolationist in international terms, new research links it to the Cold War and decolonization. Yet this trend does not consider sufficiently that the global contest over the meaning of apartheid and resistance to it occurs on the terrain of culture. My project argues that studying the global circulation of South African cultural formations in the apartheid era provides novel historiographic leverage over Western liberalism during the Cold War. It recasts apartheid as an apparatus of transnational cultural production, turning existing historiography inside out. This study seeks: • To provide the first systematic account of the deterritorialization of “apartheid”—as political signifier and as apparatus generating circuits of transnational cultural production. • To analyze these itinerant cultural formations across media and national borders, articulating new intersections. • To map the itineraries of major South African exiles, where exile is taken to be a system of interlinked circuits of affiliation and cultural production. • To revise the historiography of states other than South Africa through the lens of deterritorialized apartheid-era formations at their respective destinations. • To show how apartheid reveals contradictions within Western liberalism during the Cold War, with special reference to racial inequality. Methodologically, I introduce the model of thick convergence to analyze three periods: 1. Kliptown & Bandung: Novel possibilities, 1948-1960. 2. Sharpeville & Memphis: Drumming up resistance, 1960-1976. 3. From Soweto to Berlin: Spectacle at the barricades, 1976-1990. Each explores a cultural dominant in the form of texts, soundscapes or photographs. My work stands at the frontier of transnational research, furnishing powerful new insights into why South Africa matters on the stage of global history.

Keywords: apartheid,the cold war,liberalism,decolonization,civil rights' struggles,south african literature,south african visual culture,print culture,political exile,black atlantic,minor literatures
MicroRNA function in cardiac and metabolic disease (MICARUS)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Physiology, Pathophysiology and Endocrinology
Countries involved: Netherlands
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-04-01
End date: 2019-03-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2000000.0
EU funding (EUR): 2000000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Cardiovascular disease is the primary cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Despite numerous treatment options the prevalence of cardiovascular indications continues to increase, underscoring the need for new therapeutic strategies. In recent years, prominent roles of microRNAs (miRNAs) have been uncovered in a variety of cardiovascular disorders. miRNAs are short, single stranded RNAs that regulate gene expression by suppressing multiple, often related, mRNAs. Our studies have focussed on the cardiac specific miRNA, miR-208. We showed that, in the setting of heart failure, genetic deletion as well as therapeutic inhibition of miR-208 resulted in reduced cardiac remodeling (less hypertrophy and fibrosis), the inability to upregulate beta-MHC (a sensitive marker of pathological cardiac stress) and improved survival. Unexpectedly, mice treated with antimiR-208 displayed resistance to obesity and enhanced glucose metabolism in a mouse model of type II diabetes. These effects suggest that the heart plays a previously unrecognized role in systemic metabolic control via a miR-208 dependent mechanism. Although these studies indicate a crucial role for miR-208 in cardiac remodeling and systemic metabolism, the mechanism of action still remains to be defined. Our preliminary gene expression data indicate a cohort of miR-208 targets to be regulated in our stress models, many of which so far have unknown or ill-studied cardiac functions. The aim of the present proposal is to use genetics, gene expression analyses, stress models and antimiR approaches to study the relevance of downstream miR-208 targets for cardiac remodeling and total body metabolism and explore whether additional miRNAs besides miR-208 are relevant for cardiometabolic disease. Together these projects will increase our mechanistic understanding of miRNA function in cardiac and metabolic disease which will advance the clinical application of miRNA therapeutics.

Keywords: microrna,therapeutics,molecular biology
Mechanical signals in plants: from cellular mechanisms to growth coordination and patterning (MECHANODEVO)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Cellular and Developmental Biology
Countries involved: France
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-06-01
End date: 2020-05-31
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1869823.0
EU funding (EUR): 1869823.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

Development relies on a complex network of molecular effectors that ultimately modify the mechanical properties of cells and control shape changes. In turn, mechanical forces can also feedback on the molecular network to govern development. Several mechanosensitive proteins have been identified in animals but their role in multicellular development remains poorly documented. Plants are ideal systems to study mechanotransduction in development because their mechanics is mainly mediated by the cell wall. Here we propose to identify the plant mechanotransduction pathways and investigate their role in development, using Arabidopsis cell culture, cotyledons and shoot apical meristems as experimental systems. We will conduct a multiscale investigation into mechanotransduction, at the level of a cell, of a small group of cells, and of the tissue. We have already characterized the response of microtubules to mechanical stress using a set of micromechanical tools in these three systems, and we have identified a mechanosensing protein, which, when impaired, causes growth coordination defects in the epidermis and altered morphogenesis. We will identify and characterize other elements of the plant mechanotransduction pathways, including mechanosensitive genes and proteins, based on preliminary results and on a well-designed screen. Scaling up, we will generate transgenic lines in which patches of cells with altered mechanical properties can be induced, and we will test whether mechanical heterogeneities are used to coordinate cell wall remodeling and cell division in neighboring cells. Last, we will investigate whether these biophysical coordinating mechanisms contribute to patterning and cell fate in organs, focusing on the epidermis, the boundaries between expression domains, and stem cell identity. We will investigate whether mutants exhibiting identity defects can be rescued with applied mechanical forces or locally modified mechanical properties.

Keywords: arabidopsis,meristem,mechanics,mechanotransduction