Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Small open reading frames (smORF) as novel modulators of disorders of dietary excess (LIPMETIN-sURFing)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Individual Fellowships (IF)-Global Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Life Sciences
Countries involved: Spain,United States
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2016, 2016)
Start date: 2018-01-15
End date: 2021-09-05
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 257191.2
EU funding (EUR): 257191.2
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

Dietary excess is the major origin of cardiovascular diseases and remains the leading cause of mortality. Due to difficulties with bioinformatics detection and experimental analysis, along with their sheer numbers, small open reading frames (smORF) –of fewer than 100 amino acids– have been largely disregarded. Advances in bioinformatics, RNA-sequencing (ribosome profiling), biochemical (peptidomics) and functional (genetic) screens, suggest that a large amount of smORF are transcribed and sometimes widely conserved. However, how much of these smORF-encoded peptides or small proteins (microproteins (MPs)) are translated into a functional peptide is largely unknown. Moreover, whether food bioactive components modulate the expression of MPs remains complete obscure. Thus, the main goal of this project is to search for MPs that regulate lipid metabolism in the intestine in response to dietary excess. The intellectual merits of this proposal are threefold. First, it will use cutting-edge technology to search for novel functional MPs. Second, it will address a new group of novel potential players not previously addressed in lipid metabolism, providing a novel insight into disease mechanism and innovative therapeutic strategies. Last, by testing two common food bioactive components from our healthy Mediterranean diet, we will open up a completely new field of research in the area of nutrition and health. The research approach will involve (i) a genome-wide peptidomic screen and ribosome profiling analysis of lipid-induced intestinal MPs, (ii) the use of in vivo and in vitro biochemical approximations to validate the function of the selected intestinal peptide, and (iii) the use of dietary components hydroxytyrosol and the omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid DHA as proof of concept that MPs can be modulated by our diet food bioactive. This project is framed in the “Food & Healthy Diet and Biotechnology” research area in the European Union's Framework Programme HORIZON 2020

Keywords: dietary excess,small open reading frames sorf,peptidomic,proteomic,lipids,microprotein
Finding the Origin of the Slow Solar Wind (SLOW_SOURCE)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Universe sciences
Panel description: Astro-physics/-chemistry/-biology; solar system; planetary systems; stellar, galactic and extragalactic astronomy; cosmology; space sciences; astronomical instrumentation and data
Countries involved: France,France
Call: ERC Consolidator Grant (ERC-2018-COG, 2018)
Start date: 2019-04-01
End date: 2024-09-30
Duration (months): 66.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1995902.0
EU funding (EUR): 1995902.0
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

The origins and release mechanisms of stellar winds are long-lasting open challenges in astrophysics. Stellar winds play a fundamental role in the long-term evolution of stars and the habitability of their orbiting planets. In the solar case, the wind is observed in at least two states, fast and slow winds, that differ in their bulk properties and composition, pointing to different coronal origins. A theoretical explanation for the slow wind must explain both its variable bulk properties and its peculiar composition. This includes the measured high charge states of minor ions, the abundance variation of Helium during the solar cycle and the high abundance of elements with low first ionisation potential (so called FIP effect) reaching four times the photospheric abundance. SLOW_SOURCE is a comprehensive research project that will use current and upcoming observations as well as completely novel models of the solar atmosphere to determine the origin of the slow wind. We will develop plasma transport models coupling major and all known important minor constituents along realistic coronal magnetic field lines. This model will be the first of its kind producing modelled observations (spectroscopy, imagery) and expected in situ signatures directly from the modelled minor constituents. Combined with data from space and ground-based observatories, our new multi-species, multi-temperature 3-dimensional modelling of coronal plasma will provide new ways to infer the properties of stellar winds and tools to study the fundamental transport and heating processes of stellar plasmas. Determining the enigmatic release mechanism(s) of the slow solar wind constitutes a key objective of the upcoming Parker Solar Probe mission that will obtain radically new observations right from the start of the project. The project (2019-2024) will also be an excellent preparation for the Solar Orbiter mission that should obtain its first data during the second half of the project (2022-2024).
Multiscale Integrative Approach for Corneal Biomechanics to Assess Corneal Crosslinking (MIMetiCO)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Individual Fellowships (IF)-Standard European Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Information Science and Engineering
Countries involved: Switzerland
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2017, 2017)
Start date: 2018-09-01
End date: 2020-08-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 175419.6
EU funding (EUR): 175419.6
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Approximately 250 million people worldwide are visually impaired, and this has great economic and social impact. One of the pathologies of vision loss is keratoconus, in which the mechanical balance of the cornea depending on intraocular pressure and internal stresses in corneal tissue becomes imbalanced, which can result in a corneal protrusion. Corneal crosslinking (CXL) is a clinical treatment that increases the overall mechanical stiffness of the cornea by inducing chemical bounding between collagen molecules. CXL is the present of halting corneal ectasias, and the future of noninvasive refractive surgery. However, its micro/nano-mechanisms are not completely understood. Moreover, CXL is usually applied uniformly in corneal treatments, which can result in over-stiffening and unexpected postsurgical outcomes. Ophthalmology can benefit from in silico modeling to plan and improve such interventions. However, current computational models are mainly macroscopic and cannot simulate complex phenomena involved in CXL. Multiscale computational models could improve clinical strategies by including information at different scales. MIMetiCO’s goal is to combine experiments and modelling at different scales to provide a multiscale characterization of corneal biomechanics before and after CXL. This characterization will rely on both ground-breaking and well-established technologies that include confocal microscopy, biochemical assessment, and mechanical inflation tests to determine morphological (orientation and density of fibrils), biochemical (amount of intermolecular crosslinks), and mechanical features of the cornea. MIMetiCO will use this information to calibrate the first in silico model of the cornea using a multiscale structural approach to build a virtual framework to simulate potential CXL treatments. MIMetiCO is the next step in ophthalmology, which has the potential to bring into being a new generation of clinical assessment.

Keywords: cornea,crosslinking,biomechanics,virtual simulation framework,multiscale experiments confocal microscopy,mechanics and biochemical assessment,multiscale in silico modelling
Spectral geometric methods in practice (SPECGEO)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Computer science and informatics
Panel description: Informatics and information systems, computer science, scientific computing, intelligent systems
Countries involved: Italy
Call: ERC Starting Grant (ERC-2018-STG, 2018)
Start date: 2018-09-01
End date: 2024-08-31
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1434000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1434000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Spectral geometry concerns the study of the geometric properties of data domains, such as surfaces or graphs, via the spectral decomposition of linear operators defined upon them. Due to their valuable properties analogous to Fourier theory, such methods find widespread use in several branches of computer science, ranging from computer vision to machine learning and network analysis. Despite their pervasive presence, very little efforts have been devoted to the design and application of spectral techniques that deal with corrupted, missing, high-dimensional or abstract data undergoing complex transformations. This lack of focus is mainly motivated by the widespread acceptance, supported in part by theoretical results, that an ε-perturbation to the geometry of the data (as small as the removal of a single point) can induce arbitrary changes in the operator’s eigendecomposition – leading to a limited adoption of spectral models in real-world applications. This project challenges this view, contending that such presumption of instability is primarily due to a suboptimal choice of the analytical tools that are currently being employed, and which only provide part of the picture. In fact, strong evidence largely contradicts the expected behavior on real geometric data. The reason behind this apparent inconsistency lies in the different focus of current methods, which provide crude bounds and are directed toward other kinds of perturbation than those observed in real settings. The ambitious goal of this project is to develop a novel theoretical and computational framework that will fundamentally change the way spectral techniques are constructed, interpreted, and applied. These tools will enable a range of currently infeasible uses of spectral methods on real data. They will deal with strong incompleteness, corruption and cross-modality, and they will be applied to outstanding problems in geometry processing, computer vision, machine learning, and computational biology.

Keywords: spectral geometry,shape analysis
Synthesis of methylene blue and some new thioether derivatives with an enhanced electrochemical microflow cell (BlueFlowCell)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Individual Fellowships (IF)-Society and Enterprise panel
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Information Science and Engineering
Countries involved: France
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2019, 2019)
Start date: 2020-09-01
End date: 2022-08-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 184707.84
EU funding (EUR): 184707.84
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Methylene blue is the first fully synthetic drug used in medicine, the most effective and safe medicines needed in a health system. In addition, thioethers derivatives are important materials that are used in organic, bioorganic and medicinal chemistry and are also known to exhibit different biological activities such as antioxidant and antibacterial. These compounds are synthesized commercially by chemical methods that suffer from significant limitations, such as expensive and toxic reagents, solvents, tedious work-up, safety problems. Organic electrosynthesis is recognized as a typical environmentally friendly process with features that many of which cannot be achieved by other methods. Most electroorganic processes are performed under reagentless and mild conditions in one step using efficient and ecofriendly methods and are in agreement with all the principles of green chemistry. Within this field, the use of microreactors in continuous flow is also concurrent with electrochemistry because of its convenient advantages over batch, such as no supporting electrolyte at all, due to the small distance between electrodes; high electrode surface-to-reactor volume ratio, short residence time and etc. This project aims to fabricate an electrochemical flow microreactor by the novel method of photolithography to decrease the interelectrode gap below 100µm. Thus, the resulting device should be suited to the electrosynthesis of a wide range of reactions without a supporting electrolyte solution. Through the present project, we also aim electrochemical synthesis of methylene blue and some new thioethers derivatives for the first time with a facile one-pot and supporting electrolyte-free method. Overall, this method has shown to be a promising tool for electrosynthesis and improving the outcome of standard batch cells. As well as, during the whole of the project the ER will gain maximum knowledge in microfluidic integrated devices and benefit from entrepreneurship skills.

Keywords: green chemistry,electrosynthesis,methylene blue,electrochemical flow cell,flow chemistry,microfluidics,photolithography
Post-transcriptional regulation of influenza A virus RNA (PTFLU)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Immunity, Infection and Immunotherapy
Panel description: The immune system, related disorders and their mechanisms, biology of infectious agents and infection, biological basis of prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, innovative immunological tools and approaches, including therapies
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2020-STG, 2020)
Start date: 2021-04-01
End date: 2026-03-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1568010.0
EU funding (EUR): 1568010.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

This research proposal aims to significantly alter our understanding of the critical role post-transcriptional processes play in the influenza A virus (IAV) life cycle. Post-transcriptional regulation of cellular mRNAs has seen a lot of research interest in recent years, including projects looking at the effects of RNA modifications and ribosome specialisation. However, much less attention has been paid to the effects these processes have on the viral life cycle. This project focuses on the post-transcriptional regulation of both IAV mRNAs and negative strand vRNAs. However, outcomes of this work will have a profound effect on our perceptions of the regulatory processes affecting a wide range of viral RNAs. In fact, by better understanding the roles of these processes on viral RNAs, such as IAV, we can also uncover novel functions on cellular mRNAs. This project comprises 5 work packages with 11 intermediate goals. We will first identify the locations of various modifications present on IAV RNAs across multiple strains in both human and avian infected cells, significantly expanding on our current understanding, while exploring the potential for species-specific adaptions. Through mutagenesis and RNA capture techniques, we will evaluate how these modifications affect RNA characteristics and what effector proteins are involved in these processes. We will also use this information to determine the composition of ribosomes actively translating IAV mRNAs and evaluate whether specialised ribosomes are involved in the normal IAV life cycle. Finally, we will focus on the roles of RNA modifications on vRNAs, which should be quite distinct from mRNAs, and the host proteins that specifically bind, or are blocked from binding, sites of modification. This is an ambitious, multifaceted project that will have a direct impact on our understanding of IAV biology, and also provide novel insights of value to multiple disciplines including virology, RNA biology and protein translation.

Keywords: influenza epitranscriptomics ribosome specialisation post transcriptional
Pathogen-responsive hydrogels release antimicrobial vesicles for local infection treatment (Gels4Bac)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Panel description: New materials and new synthetic approaches, structure-properties relations, solid state chemistry, molecular architecture, organic chemistry
Countries involved: Germany,Germany
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2020-STG, 2020)
Start date: 2021-09-01
End date: 2026-08-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1499333.0
EU funding (EUR): 1499333.0
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

The rise of bacterial resistance against antibiotic drugs is becoming the leading cause for morbidity and mortality worldwide. In Europe alone, up to 33,000 people die each year from infections with resistant bacteria. Current antibiotic therapy often suffers from low selectivity, adverse side effects in other organs and impaired ability to overcome bacterial barriers. These problems limit the efficacy of our antibiotic arsenal. Local and effective eradication of bacterial infections is of utmost importance to avert the formation of new resistances. My research centres on naturally derived vesicles. All living cells and microorganisms produce these nanoparticles and equip them with unique features for transport and targeted delivery of molecules. I have previously discovered a new group of bacteria-derived vesicles with low cytotoxicity and inherent antibiotic activity. Upon contact with culture supernatant from pathogens, bacteria produce higher potent antimicrobial vesicles. Now, I would like to incorporate these vesicles into hydrogels – Gels4Bac – that respond to pathogenic factors in the infection environment. Once the hydrogel encounters these factors, antimicrobial vesicles are selectively and locally released in the presence of specific pathogens. The local application reduces time until treatment, adverse side effects and unspecific killing of beneficial microbiota. Gels4Bac will create new options for selectively treating infectious dispositions. Stimulation of vesicle producing bacteria with pathogen-derived components may open an on-demand customisable, quick and cost-effective approach for treatment. In addition, it creates new avenues for the discovery of novel antimicrobial agents besides current screening and medicinal chemistry. Such platform technology is imperative to equip Europe in its fight against the rise of infections with resistant bacteria, and will boost Europe's scientific competitiveness in infection therapy.

Keywords: extracellular vesicles,outer membrane vesicles,stimuli responsive hydrogels
Microbial life in oil (EcOILogy)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Biotechnology and Biosystems Engineering
Panel description: Biotechnology using all organisms, biotechnology for environment and food applications, applied plant and animal sciences, bioengineering and synthetic biology, biomass and biofuels, biohazards
Countries involved: Germany
Call: ERC Advanced Grant (ERC-2014-ADG, 2014)
Start date: 2015-09-01
End date: 2020-08-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2549250.0
EU funding (EUR): 2549250.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Microbial biodegradation is a key factor influencing the quality of oil and, according to current concepts, takes place mostly at the continuous oil-water transition zone in oil reservoirs. I recently discovered microorganisms in minuscule water droplets (1-3 µl) entrapped in oil from a natural oil seep. In EcOILogy, I propose that biodegradation of oil resources takes place in such minuscule water droplets dispersed in the oil phase which is a shift of paradigm and a new conceptional view for environmental science, -life in oil-. EcOILogy aims to explore this new world investigating the generic principles of life in oil. I will study if such droplets are a common phenomenon in degraded oil resources and how significant the respective degradation activities are. To this end, I will develop reverse stable isotope labelling as a novel method for quantifying minute microbial activities (WP 1). The droplets provide a unique test system of micro-ecosystem, all experiencing identical boundary conditions in the oil with no dispersion of microorganisms between the isolated droplets. I will study how microbial communities for oil degradation assemble in the droplets allowing for unprecedented testing of ecological theory including a new bimodal hypothesis of community assembly. To tackle the big challenge of metabolic traits in systems ecology, I will make use of metagenomics, single cell sequencing, and high resolution metabolomics to assess the functions in single water droplets (WP 2). Finally, I will study how microorganisms adapt to this extreme environment under saturated hydrocarbon concentrations by isolation and comparative genome analysis of strains and study the role of different organisms in the droplets by Raman-CLSM (WP 3). Thus, EcOilogy opens new horizons for microbial degradation of our most important energy resources with far-reaching implications for fundamental, interdisciplinary understanding of ecological processes, bioremediation, and oil exploratio