Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Study of the molecular organization of cell junctions by cryo-electron tomography (JTOMO)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Molecular and Structural Biology and Biochemistry
Countries involved: Germany
Call:  (ERC-2009-StG, 2009)
Start date: 2010-01-01
End date: 2015-12-31
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1724400.0
EU funding (EUR): 1724400.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Cells sense, affect and respond to their environment through the fundamental function of adhesion. Several types of adhesion sites, which are mediated via dynamically maintained multi-protein structures, anchor extracellular-matrix proteins to the cytoskeleton. Despite considerable efforts, the long-standing questions of how adhesion sites are formed, structured and regulated remain unanswered. In this research plan we will investigate desmosomes and adherens junctions by cryo-electron tomography of cells and tissue. The principal objectives are: (a) to visualize the molecular architecture and reveal the structural differences of the adhesion sites under various conditions and influences, i.e. mutations, wounds, etc. (b) to reveal their molecular association to the cytoskeleton (intermediate and actin filaments respectively), and to chart the network of interactions underlying cellular adhesion, and (c) to develop novel pattern recognition and classification techniques in order to structurally characterize the adhesion sites in toto by cryo-electron tomography of vitreous sections. We will use pattern recognition techniques and locally averaged cryo-electron sub-tomograms to quantify the macromolecular complexes in terms of stoichiometry and protein interactions in situ at high resolution (~3 nm). In particular, we aim to reveal how a pool of constituent proteins is organized in the two adhesion sites. Significant amounts of information coming from immunogold electron microscopy, fragments from X-ray structures, force measurements with atomic force microscopy, and structural bioinformatics will be integrated into our cryo-electron tomograms. This research will pioneer structural comparisons of protein networks at nanometer resolution in situ and in toto. The experimental and theoretical methods that will be developed would be indispensable for studying any spatially constrained protein network whose state depends on local properties.

Keywords: electron tomography,cell junctions
Child health intervention interactions in low-income countries (CHILIC)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Diagnostic tools, therapies and public health
Countries involved: Denmark
Call:  (ERC-2009-StG, 2009)
Start date: 2010-01-01
End date: 2014-12-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1686043.0
EU funding (EUR): 1686043.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Vitamin A supplementation (VAS) and vaccines are the most powerful tools to reduce child mortality in low-income countries. However, we may not use these interventions optimally because we disregard that the interventions may have immunomodulatory effects which differ for boys and girls and which may interact with the effects of other interventions. I have proposed the hypothesis that VAS and vaccines interact. This hypothesis is supported by randomised and observational studies showing that the combination of VAS and DTP may be harmful. I have furthermore proposed that VAS has sex-differential effects. VAS seems beneficial for boys but may not carry any benefits for girls. These findings challenge the current understanding that VAS and vaccines have only targeted effects and can be given together without considering interactions. This is of outmost importance for policy makers. The global trend is to combine health interventions for logistic reasons. My research suggests that this may not always be a good idea. Furthermore, the concept of sex-differential response to our common health interventions opens up for a completely new understanding of the immunology of the two sexes and may imply that we need to treat the two sexes differently in order to treat them optimally possibly also in high-income countries. In the present proposal I outline a series of inter-disciplinary epidemiological and immunological studies, which will serve to determine the overall and sex-differential effects of VAS and vaccines, the mechanisms behind these effects, and the basis for the immunological difference between boys and girls. If my hypotheses are true we can use the existing tools in a more optimal way to reduce child mortality without increasing costs. Thus, the results could lead to shifts in policy as well as paradigms.

Keywords: child mortality,health interventions,low-income countries,vitamin a,vaccines,sex-differences,immuno-epidemiology
Understanding the molecular blueprint and functional complexity of the endocannabinoid metabolome in the brain (BRAINCANNABINOIDS)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Neurosciences and neural disorders
Countries involved: Hungary
Call:  (ERC-2009-StG, 2009)
Start date: 2009-11-01
End date: 2014-10-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1638000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1638000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

We and others have recently delineated the molecular architecture of a new feedback pathway in brain synapses, which operates as a synaptic circuit breaker. This pathway is supposed to use a group of lipid messengers as retrograde synaptic signals, the so-called endocannabinoids. Although heterogeneous in their chemical structures, these molecules along with the psychoactive compound in cannabis are thought to target the same effector in the brain, the CB1 receptor. However, the molecular catalog of these bioactive lipids and their metabolic enzymes has been expanding rapidly by recent advances in lipidomics and proteomics raising the possibility that these lipids may also serve novel, yet unidentified physiological functions. Thus, the overall aim of our research program is to define the molecular and anatomical organization of these endocannabinoid-mediated pathways and to determine their functional significance. In the present proposal, we will focus on understanding how these novel pathways regulate synaptic and extrasynaptic signaling in hippocampal neurons. Using combination of lipidomic, genetic and high-resolution anatomical approaches, we will identify distinct chemical species of endocannabinoids and will show how their metabolic enzymes are segregated into different subcellular compartments in cell type- and synapse-specific manner. Subsequently, we will use genetically encoded gain-of-function, loss-of-function and reporter constructs in imaging experiments and electrophysiological recordings to gain insights into the diverse tasks that these new pathways serve in synaptic transmission and extrasynaptic signal processing. Our proposed experiments will reveal fundamental principles of intercellular and intracellular endocannabinoid signaling in the brain.

Keywords: synaptic plasticity,cb1 receptor,glutamate,gaba,hippocampus,anandamide,2-ag,mglur,calcium
Evolutionary and functional analysis of polymorphic inversions in the human genome (INVFEST)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Evolutionary, population and environmental biology
Countries involved: Spain
Call:  (ERC-2009-StG, 2009)
Start date: 2010-02-01
End date: 2015-10-31
Duration (months): 69.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1475377.0
EU funding (EUR): 1475377.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The last years have seen an extraordinary explosion of studies characterizing genome variation at different levels, and have opened new opportunities in deciphering the genetic basis of phenotypic characteristics and the evolutionary forces involved. One of the major breakthroughs has been the discovery of an unprecedented degree of structural variation in the human genome, including deletions, duplications and inversions. However, the main challenge is to understand the biological significance of these genomic changes. In particular, for many years inversions have been the paradigm of evolutionary biology. Thus, the identification of the whole set of human inversions gives us a unique opportunity to investigate the functional and evolutionary consequences of this type of changes at a large scale. The specific objectives of the project are: (1) Catalogue the precise location of all common polymorphic inversions in the human genome; (2) Determine the population distribution and the evolutionary history of these inversions; (3) Investigate the functional consequences and the effects on gene expression of human inversions; and (4) Assess the effect of inversions on nucleotide variation patterns and the role of natural selection in their maintenance. This project will follow a multidisciplinary approach that combines experimental and bioinformatic analyses and will benefit from the great amount of information on the human genome already available and that will be generated in the next months. The proposed research therefore represents a very appropriate and timely contribution to the study of human structural variation and its role in phenotypic variation and evolution. Furthermore, it will provide additional insights on genome function, gene-expression regulation mechanisms, and the association of genetic changes and particular traits, and promises to stir novel hypothesis for future studies.

Keywords: molecular evolution human evolution structural variation phenotypic variation chromosomal inversions
Repair Spinal Cord Injury by Controlling Migration of Neural Stem Cells - multidiciplinary approaches of electric stimulation and nanotechnology (SCINSCEF)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Diagnostic tools, therapies and public health
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2009-StG, 2009)
Start date: 2010-01-01
End date: 2015-12-31
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1759613.0
EU funding (EUR): 1759613.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Millions of people worldwide suffer from spinal cord injury (SCI), with devastating consequences and costs. Various clinical approaches have been attempted to treat SCI with little satisfaction due to the limitation of self-regeneration of axons. Neural stem cell transplantation is an alternative approach with great potential to treat SCI, but the mechanisms controlling migration of implanted stem cells are unclear. A recent SCI clinical trial using implanted electric stimulators to promote axon regeneration showed promising results. However, the mechanism underpinning this technique also remains elusive. We shall investigate genes and molecules regulating the electric fields controlled neural stem cells migration. We have shown before that electric signals play essential roles in directing cell migration during wound healing, and that PI3K and PTEN are critical in the regulation of this event (Zhao, Song et al. Nature 2006). Pax6 and ephrin are also proved to be important in guiding cell migration, however the interactions between PI3K, PTEN and Pax6, Eph-ephrin pathways are unknown. We shall further investigate their potential interactions in this project.. Apart from electric signals, neural stem cell migration can be also regulated by chemical, physical, and haptotactic guidance cues. This project shall use multidisciplinary approaches to combine neural stem cells transplantation with electric stimulation and nanotechnology, to optimize a novel stem cell replacement therapy. We shall use multiple peptide structures to engineer diverse adhesion peptide motifs on the nanofibers, and embed EGF/bFGF into 3D nanofibers scaffold to encapsulate neural stem cells for the transplantation study. These shall be tested in both 2D / 3D in vitro and in SCI animal models in vivo.

Keywords: electric field,neural stem cells,spinal cord injury,biomaterials synthesis,pi3k,pten,pax6,chemotaxis,haptotaxis
Activity-dependent signaling in radial glial cells and their neuronal progeny (ACTIVE_NEUROGENESIS)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Neurosciences and neural disorders
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2009-StG, 2009)
Start date: 2010-02-01
End date: 2015-01-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1284808.0
EU funding (EUR): 1284808.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

A significant advance in the field of development has been the appreciation that radial glial cells are progenitors and give birth to neurons in the brain. In order to advance this exciting area of biology, we need approaches that combine structural and functional studies of these cells. This is reflected by the emerging realisation that dynamic interactions involving radial glia may be critical for the regulation of their proliferative behaviour. It has been observed that radial glia experience transient elevations in intracellular Ca2+ but the nature of these signals, and the information that they convey, is not known. The inability to observe these cells in vivo and over the course of their development has also meant that basic questions remain unexplored. For instance, how does the behaviour of a radial glial cell at one point in development, influence the final identity of its progeny? I propose to build a research team that will capitalise upon methods we have developed for observing individual radial glia and their progeny in an intact vertebrate nervous system. The visual system of Xenopus Laevis tadpoles offers non-invasive optical access to the brain, making time-lapse imaging of single cells feasible over minutes and weeks. The system s anatomy lends itself to techniques that measure the activity of the cells in a functional sensory network. We will use this to examine signalling mechanisms in radial glia and how a radial glial cell s experience influences its proliferative behaviour and the types of neuron it generates. We will also examine the interactions that continue between a radial glial cell and its daughter neurons. Finally, we will explore the relationships that exist within neuronal progeny derived from a single radial glial cell.

Keywords: neural progenitors,neural circuit development,neural activity,calcium
Decoding the complexity of quantitative natural variation in Arabidopsis thaliana (DECODE)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Genetics,Genomics,Bioinformatics and Systems Biology
Countries involved: France
Call:  (ERC-2009-StG, 2009)
Start date: 2010-02-01
End date: 2016-01-31
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1742113.0
EU funding (EUR): 1742113.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Following a long history of quantitative genetics in crop plants, it now becomes feasible to use naturally-occuring variation contained in Arabidopsis thaliana accessions (lines isolated from natural populations) as the source of quantitative genomics approaches, designed to map QTLs and resolve them at the gene level. Apart from being able to exploit in multiple genetic backgrounds allelic variation that cannot be easily generated by conventional mutagenesis, the (relatively few) success of the QTL studies has often been because of the use of quantitative phenotyping, as opposed to the qualitative gauges used in typical mutant screens. Among the various genetic mechanisms responsible for natural variation that have just started to be revealed, cis-acting regulation is potentially of large impact, despite remaining more difficult to recognize and confirm. The objective of this project is to apply genome-wide quantitative molecular genetics to both, a very integrative and classical quantitative trait (growth in interaction with the environment) and a molecular trait a priori more directly linked to the source of variation (gene expression under cis-regulation). We propose to use a combination of our unique high-troughput phenotyping robot, fine-mapping, complementation approaches and association genetics to pinpoint a significant number of QTLs and eQTLs to the gene level and identify causative polymorphisms and the molecular variation controlling natural diversity. Working at an unprecedented scale should finally allow to resolve enough quantitative loci and pay a significant contribution to drawing a general picture as to how and where in the pathways adaptation is shaping natural variation and improve our understanding of the transcriptional cis-regulatory code.

Keywords: natural variation,qtl,eqtl,cis-regulation,positional cloning,complementation
Development of low-cost, lightweight Highly Insulating Polymers for refrigerated transport, heating and cooling installations (HIP)

Framework: FP7 — Capacities
Programme: Research for the benefit of SMEs
Destination: Research for SME associations
Action type: Research for the benefit of specific groups
Countries involved: Türkiye,United Kingdom,Slovenia,United Kingdom,Norway,United Kingdom,Ireland,Spain,Spain,United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-SME-2008-2, 2008)
Start date: 2010-10-01
End date: 2013-09-30
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2581236.0
EU funding (EUR): 1931038.9
Participants: 12
Project status: CLOSED

Our members, as operators of refrigerated transport and installers of HVAC systems, are dependent on excellent insulation for energy efficiency. There are over 600,000 refrigerated vehicles and containers in Europe and each one wastes thousands of Euros of energy each year due to poor insulation. Likewise, payback on renewable energy systems is compromised by poor thermal storage, reducing their popularity. In short, our members are wasting energy and hence losing money through a lack of optimal insulation. Currently, our options are limited to expensive, high performance materials such as aerogels and vacuum insulation panels, or low-cost but poorly-performing foams. We need a new insulation material that can fill this performance gap, offering high thermal resistance but at a cost close to insulating foams. The HIP project will develop an innovative new class of polymer insulation materials based on high internal phase emulsion templating (HIPE). HIPE materials have been used in other applications but never before for high-performance insulation. HIPE materials allow close control over porosity, pore size distribution and mechanical properties. Because of this, we can precisely engineer the thermal properties of the material within a low-cost manufacturing process. Our objective is to achieve a thermal conductivity of ≤0.015W/m.K at a cost of less than €500 per cubic metre. Compared to conventional PU foam insulation, the savings will be considerable: Based on our predicted uptake in the refrigerated transport and solar thermal markets alone, the reduced CO2 emission will be over 200,000 tonnes by 2020 and our members will save in excess of €50 million in energy costs.

Keywords: thermal insulation,polymer foams
Empowering Business Ecosystems of Small Service Enterprises to Face the Economic Crisis (EBEST)

Framework: FP7 — Capacities
Programme: Research for the benefit of SMEs
Destination: Research for SME associations
Action type: Research for the benefit of specific groups
Countries involved: Italy,Spain,Slovakia,Belgium,Spain,Greece,Hungary,Slovakia
Call:  (FP7-SME-2008-2, 2008)
Start date: 2010-01-01
End date: 2012-05-31
Duration (months): 29.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2701347.4
EU funding (EUR): 1650000.0
Participants: 16
Project status: CLOSED

The eBEST project addresses small companies (typically with less than 50 employees) providing services to other businesses, often by subcontracting, in different industrial sectors. In general the intended service companies perform added-value activities in the intermediate phases of the value chain and/or in the repair and maintenance phases. The eBEST project strategic objective is to set-up, experiment and promote the adoption of new collaboration practices within each business ecosystem and across the ecosystem borders, taking advantage of a shared knowledge, an agreed corpus or rules and codes of practice, and a suite of ICT tools to support the intended ecosystem dynamics. The eBEST project operational objectives are: • Presenting worldwide the offers of the single service companies and clusters, and the integrated offer of the ecosystem as a whole, by exploiting sectoral and multilingual ontologies and taxonomies. • Adopting trust-building mechanisms, codes of practice, work assignment rules and performance evaluation criteria to guide the fair coopetition of the target companies. • Providing the target companies with easily accessible ICT applications and services to enable communication and collaboration within ecosystems and with the external world. • Experimenting and improving in real-life conditions the functional coverage and user acceptance of the proposed approach, methodology and ICT functions. • Deploying the project results to the largest audience so as to reach a critical mass of user companies in the shortest possible time after project completion. The economical situation calls for fast answers. For this reason the above challenging objectives should be reached in no more than two years. This is feasible since the RTD performers bring to the eBEST project a huge amount of background knowledge, in both organisational and technological terms, that was acquired by their participation in a number of recent European projects.

Keywords: web-based services,semantics,digital ecosystems
INTUMESCENT MATERIALS WITH IMPROVED FIRE RETARDANT AND FLAME RESISTANT PROPERTIES FOR BUILDING and TRANSPORT APPLICATIONS (INTIMIRE)

Framework: FP7 — Capacities
Programme: Research for the benefit of SMEs
Destination: Research for SME associations
Action type: Research for the benefit of specific groups
Countries involved: France,Germany,Italy,Belgium,Belgium,France,France,Belgium,Sweden,Spain,Germany,Belgium,Germany
Call:  (FP7-SME-2008-2, 2008)
Start date: 2010-04-01
End date: 2013-03-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1957850.4
EU funding (EUR): 1274900.0
Participants: 15
Project status: CLOSED

This proposal INTIMIRE concerns the production of fire retardant and flame resistant polyester and polypropylene fibres, films and upholstery end products based on the intumescent flame retardancy concept. These products must give an answer to the evolution in requirements defined in upcoming European norms for upholstered furniture and railway transportation. They also must offer improved durability and thermomechanical properties. The INTIMIRE project primarily addresses problems that are facing European SME’s textile industries. They are connected with the evolution in the strict CE regulation and standard for fire retardant products. None of the textile products available today, achieves the following points: the criteria of new norms, the environment preservation and the requirement of consumer. In textile sector, the industry size is small or medium, and overall each SME’s is very specialised. As the challenge is high and common to all, it is a huge necessity to gather a large number of SME’s concerned. That is why the SME’s AG takes the leadership of such developments, and this will increase the potentiality of results applications among their members.

Keywords: textile,extrusion,polyester,polypropylene,flame-retardant,phosphorus derivatives