Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Transcriptional regulation of oil accumulation in the endosperm of oilseeds (TRIANON)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: France
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IEF, 2013)
Start date: 2014-09-01
End date: 2016-08-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 261384.6
EU funding (EUR): 261384.6
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Consumption of oil derived from seeds is steeply increasing worldwide. First, oilseeds represent a key component of human and livestock diets. Then, fatty acids found in storage lipids accumulated in oilseeds are structurally similar to long chain hydrocarbons, so that plant oils are now widely used as competitive and sustainable alternatives to hydrocarbon-based products for energy and green chemistry (synthesis of detergents, plastics, lubricants and paints). The increasing demand of plant oils for both nutritional and industrial applications highlights the urgent need to develop original methodologies allowing the increase of seed oil content when limited progress has been obtained by conventional breeding over the last decade. Elucidation of the molecular mechanisms controlling oil storage in seeds will ultimately allow engineering domesticated high yielding oil crop species. In oilseeds, two compartments, namely the endosperm and the embryo, can accumulate oil to different extents, depending on the species considered. Although recent advances have contributed to the elucidation of the transcriptional regulation of oil storage within embryo structures, our understanding of the regulatory processes controlling oil accumulation within the endosperm remains very limited. The TRIANON project is set up to elucidate the transcriptional regulation of oil accumulation in the endosperm in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, an oleaginous species of the Brassicaceae family. The project has three major objectives: 1. Fully elucidating the molecular mechanism involving MYB118, the first endosperm specific transcriptional regulator of oil accumulation just characterized in the host laboratory. 2. Isolating a set of new transcriptional regulators participating in the control of oil storage within the endosperm of oilseeds. 3. Exploiting this knowledge to modify oil accumulation in a tissue-specific manner (in seeds) in the frame of a biotechnological approach.

Keywords: triacylglycerol,plant,seed,maturation,lipid metabolism,endosperm,transcription factors,reserve partitioning,biotechnology,green chemistry,arabidopsis,protein-dna interactions
Studying Resistance to Cancer Therapeutics in Prostate Cancer (RESICT-PC)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IEF, 2013)
Start date: 2014-05-01
End date: 2016-04-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 231283.2
EU funding (EUR): 231283.2
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Several new therapies have been recently approved for the treatment of castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) but drug resistance invariably develops and eventually causes death. Currently, the knowledge on the molecular mechanisms underlying resistance is limited; this is an area of urgent unmet medical need to allow improved treatments for patients. This study proposes a multidisciplinary effort led by the Marie-Curie fellow that will aim to identify genomic aberrations associated with drug resistance. We hypothesize that disseminated circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and DNA (CTD) from blood and plasma will contain real-time genetic information about the changes occurring in the tumor and can be used as an early biomarker of progression or responsiveness to treatment, with minimal invasiveness and discomfort to the patient. Firstly, next generation sequencing data of fresh-frozen CRPC biopsies collected prior to, and after progression on abiraterone and/or enzalutamide treatment and patient-matched archival hormone therapy-naïve samples collected at The Institute of Cancer Research, will be analyzed together with the computational oncology group at University of Trento (PI: Dr Demichelis). Second, single CTC isolation will be performed using a research protocol that is novel and developed in collaboration with Dr Terstappen (University of Twente) and Dr Tibbe (biotechnology company Aquamarijn) in the setting of the FP7 grant “CTCtrap”. The fellow aims to genetically characterize CTCs and CTD over time by high-throughput targeted deep sequencing to elucidate the processes underlying metastasis and evolution of resistance in prostate cancer. Thirdly, the fellow will perform studies on selected genomic aberrations to functionally confirm their role. The results could identify novel therapeutic targets and inform on the development of assays to select patients for a specific treatment.

Keywords: prostate cancer,circulating biomarkers,circulating tumor cells (ctc),therapy resistance to abiraterone and enzalutamide,next generations sequencing,molecular genotyping
Characterization of epithelial wound repair at the molecular level for revealing epithelial aspects of inflammatory bowel disease (EPIREP)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: International Incoming Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Denmark
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IIF, 2013)
Start date: 2015-02-26
End date: 2017-06-01
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 230809.8
EU funding (EUR): 230809.8
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) affects millions of people worldwide. The incidence and the prevalence are rising every year. This chronic disease not only decreases patient's quality of life but also creates a huge socio-economic burden for society. For establishment of a curative therapy, it is critical to understand the pathophysiology of IBD and this requires comprehensive understanding of intestinal epithelial regeneration process at the molecular level. The immune system and the epithelial tissues co-orchestrate the process of epithelial repair, and defects in each part can result in the onset of IBD via delayed wound-healing of the epithelium. Whereas epithelial stem cells are essential for the normal maintenance of the colon, my preliminary evidence from murine colitis models suggests that a wide range of epithelial cells contribute to tissue repair by acquiring stem cell properties during the early phases of epithelial regeneration. As genome wide epigenetic modifications have significant impact on cellular identity, I speculate that the observed cellular plasticity involves significant changes in the epigenetic status and that epigenetic modifiers orchestrate intestinal epithelial regeneration. My aim is to understand the relationship between epithelial regeneration and the epigenetic landscape as well as to find the connection between the disarrangements of this system and the onset of IBD. I will address these questions using grafting and primary culture technologies that I developed during my Ph.D. This, combined with lineage tracing methods and techniques for assessing the epigenome, which are available at the host lab, form the fundamental platform for this proposal. This project will potentially reveal the integral mechanisms of intestinal epithelial repair following damage, the pathophysiological impact of epigenetic modifiers in IBD, and provide a new framework for assessing the aetiology and the onset of IBD.

Keywords: intestinal stem cells,epigenome,inflammatory bowel disease,epithelial regeneration,reprorgam
Novel miniaturized photoacoustic cell integrated with compact mid-infrared widely-tunable laser for gas-detection applications (MICEPAS MIR-EC-QCL)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: International Incoming Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Germany
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IIF, 2013)
Start date: 2014-05-01
End date: 2016-04-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 223778.4
EU funding (EUR): 223778.4
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Compact laser-spectroscopy gas detectors capable of analyzing the traces of chemical compounds in gas samples of small volume are in strong demand of applications, which need reliable substance-selective high-sensitivity analysis of gas media. Such gas detectors can be used as leak detectors for localizing explosive, toxic or narcotic substances in public accommodations. The detectors may be applicable in Life Sciences for analysis of weak gas flows emitted by small-scale biological samples: small animals and plants, their organs, tissue pieces or microscopic objects down to individual cells. The demand can be met by making of a gas detector based on a widely-tunable mid-infrared semiconductor laser and a novel miniaturized resonant photoacoustic cell. The design of this cell is optimized so as to reduce essentially the cell sizes and, simultaneously, to provide the high-performance cell operation at a selected acoustic resonance. For the properly optimized resonant cell, the window background (a signal arisen in the cell due to absorption and reflection of light beam by the cell windows) is absent at any modulation regime. Such a background-free cell is applicable to detection of any infrared-active compound whatever the spectral features of the compound. This cell design can be easily adapted to any laser-beam diameter and modulation frequency. Despite the essentially reduced sizes, the miniaturized cell is comparable to the well-developed macro-scale cells in the performance. The project goal is to integrate this novel miniaturized cell with a mid-infrared external-cavity quantum cascade laser into a compact photoacoustic gas detector and demonstrate the detector capabilities in experiments. Several detector prototypes, which answer to diverse applications, will be created and tested. All principal components (laser chip, laser-cavity design, photoacoustic cell, etc) of the prototypes will be fitted to each other for providing the best gas-detection performance.

Keywords: laser-spectroscopy gas sensing,miniaturized resonant photoacoustic cell,external-cavity quantum cascade laser,mid-infrared photoacoustic gas detector
Modelling Endogenous Technical Change in Agriculture for Food Security (METCAFOS)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Netherlands
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IEF, 2013)
Start date: 2014-04-01
End date: 2016-03-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 175974.6
EU funding (EUR): 175974.6
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

This Marie-Curie Project METCAFOS (Modelling Endogenous Technical Change in Agriculture for Food Security) represents an inter-sectoral mobility that significantly enhances the transfer of knowledge in a training-through-research framework by combining knowledge from various disciplines, namely mathematical optimization, econometrics, production technology, institutional and development economics. The objective of METCAFOS is to endogenise the drivers of technical change in the global CGE model MAGNET with the aim of improving the quality of food security projections towards 2050 and contributing thus to the understanding of the role of the technical change in reaching food security for the world population. The implementation of METCAFOS will be carried out in four stages, consisting of the compilation of global database for the empirical estimates of the drivers of technical change, the estimation of endogenous technology parameters in the second stage, their consequent incorporation into MAGNET in the third stage and deriving projections of food security under different policy scenarios in the fourth stage. The contribution of METCAFOS to science is two-fold: firstly it aims at enriching the weak empirical evidence on endogenous and factor-biased technical change in agriculture. Second, it contributes to the CGE literature, by incorporating endogenous technical change in a global CGE model. METCAFOS will bring important contributions to European Excellence by addressing issues that are important to ascertain food security for the decades to come. The importance of these topics has been recognized by the EU in the European policies of Food and Nutrition Security as well as in several research programs, including the FP-7 Project ‘Food Secure’, to which the METCAFOS project will contribute.

Keywords: technical change,agriculture,productivity,cge model,magnet,food security,research and development,innovation,simulation,projection.
Bacterial warfare: Investigation into the Type VI secretion system-associated toxin repertoire and mechanism of target cell puncture in Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PAT6SS)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: International Incoming Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IIF, 2013)
Start date: 2014-04-28
End date: 2016-04-27
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 221606.4
EU funding (EUR): 221606.4
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a human pathogen that causes life-threatening nosocomial infections. This organism has a range of virulence mechanisms, however its secretion systems play a key role in the transport of effectors, toxins and other virulence factors which are important for colonisation of niches including the human host. One newly identified secretion system is the Type VI secretion system (T6SS) which has been identified in a number of Gram-negative bacteria. This system is a specialised transmembrane complex which secretes toxins and other effectors into eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells. The H1-T6SS of P. aeruginosa is one of the best characterised systems and has been shown to target non-immune prokaryotic cells. To date, three toxins/immunity pairs (Tse1/Tsi1, Tse2/Tsi2 and Tse3/Tsi3) have been identified in P. aeruginosa. Importantly, in a P. aeruginosa triple toxin mutant, T6SS-dependent killing still occurs, suggesting more toxins are involved. The current research will identify novel T6SS toxins and elucidate their transport. The use of transposon directed insertion sequencing (TraDIS) will uncover the full P. aeruginosa toxin repertoire. The mechanism of T6SS target cell puncture and effector secretion is currently unclear. One possibility is that effectors are linked to the cell-puncturing device, VgrG. This hypothesis will be investigated by testing the ability of VgrG-toxin chimeras to mediate T6SS-dependent cell killing. To identify any non-toxin proteins that are secreted by VgrG, a Pseudomonas two-hybrid library will be screened, using full length VgrG or the C terminus of VgrG as bait. Finally, the puncture and delivery of effectors by the H1-T6SS will be examined using in situ live fluorescent microscopy. Overall, the proposed research will provide breakthrough insight into the mechanism of action of this important virulence factor in P. aeruginosa which could be exploited for the development of targeted therapeutic options.

Keywords: type vi secretion system/pseudomonas aerguinosa/virulence/toxin
Role and function of olfaction in Seabirds (BIRDSCENTS)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IEF, 2013)
Start date: 2014-07-01
End date: 2016-06-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 221606.4
EU funding (EUR): 221606.4
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Sensory ecology, bird olfaction and emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are unexplored fields of research. However, recent studies provided evidence that olfaction plays a fundamental role in the avian ecology, especially in hypogean petrels. Petrels are known to return to the same nest with the same partner in the same colony each year. Latest investigations strongly suggest that the birds use at least olfactory cues in nest and partner recognition with emission of specific and complex chemical signatures, reliably genetically controlled. Research on avian chemical communication has mainly focused on uropygial gland secretions and feather lipids. While, the ultimate carrier of these secretions is the plumage and the characteristic musky scent of petrels emanates only from it. Surprisingly, no study to date has focused on this scent. The proposed project aims to characterize composition and identity of VOCs emanating from plumage and nests both chemically and behaviourally and to assess presence and extent of genetic control of such scent signatures. Thus, samples of plumage and nests and VOCs will be collected from breeding birds in the Kerguelen Islands, Southern Indian Ocean. VOCs will be analysed using gas chromatography - mass spectrometry and resulting profiles evaluated using multivariate statistical and modeling methods. Subsequent behavioural assays using artificially reconstructed scents based on the evaluation will gain further insight into active molecules and their function. Cross-fostering experiments will allow discrimination of environmental and genetic compounds of individual scents. This project will provide novel findings and methodological framework with a much-needed template for future investigations into the chemical communication system and chemical ecology of petrels, birds and vertebrates in general and help to establish the role of olfaction in birds and its implications in conservation e.g. future effects of global change.

Keywords: volatile organic compounds,birds olfaction,individual label,homing label
Multiple Scattering description of Ballistic Electron Emission Miscroscope for materials used in spin injection (MS-BEEM)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: France
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IEF, 2013)
Start date: 2014-05-19
End date: 2016-10-18
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 269743.8
EU funding (EUR): 269743.8
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Spintronics is now a major challenge at the international level with the prospect of manipulating, storing and transporting the electron spin in semiconductors. This will lead to a whole new family of much faster devices, working at low power, including programmable spin transistors. It has been demonstrated that the efficiency of spin injection is strongly dependent on the structure of the interface between the layers involved, and therefore it is essential to be able to characterize the structural and electronic properties of these interfaces, and study the transport through all the layers. Ballistic Electron Emission Microscopy (BEEM) is a tool that was specifically designed for this purpose. It is based on Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy (STM) and consists in the injection of electrons from the STM tip across a tunnelling gap into a thin metal layer that forms with a semiconductor substrate a Schottky barrier. At the metal/semiconductor interface, the Schottky barrier only allows a fraction of them to pass and be detected as the BEEM current. This enables in particular to study the spatial dependence of transport in buried interfaces. However, actual theoretical models to describe BEEM are based on band structure or k-space Green's function methods, and do not take into account the shape and size of the STM tip, although there is clear experimental evidence that these parameters strongly affect the properties on the electron current. Real Space Multiple Scattering (RS-MS) is a framework where this effect can be taken into account properly to give a true real space description of BEEM. The purpose of this proposal is to devise a completely new description of BEEM using the flexible RS-MS framework, in order to better understand the transport properties of the spin carried by electrons in heterostructures associating magnetic electrodes and semiconductors. These heterostructures are at the core of the research for spin injection.

Keywords: spin transport,spin transistor,ballistic electron emission microscopy (beem),real space multiple scattering (rs-ms) theory,shape and size of stm tips
FORECASTING COMMUNITY-LEVEL RESPONSES TO GLOBAL CHANGE (FORECOMM)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IEF, 2013)
Start date: 2014-10-01
End date: 2016-11-25
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 221606.4
EU funding (EUR): 221606.4
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Climatic change ranks amongst the greatest threats to biodiversity across the Earth’s biomes. This climatic change is accompanied by unprecedented anthropogenic impacts through habitat loss, overexploitation of natural resources, spread of invasive species and disease, which have reduced and homogenised biodiversity affecting ecosystem goods and services at regional and global scales. Predicting how natural communities will cope with anticipated changes is one of the greatest challenges for ecologists and has prompted them to develop predictive models that forecast changes in the geographic distribution of species, communities and phylogenetic diversity. Most predictive models, however, do not incorporate biotic interactions and thus are unlikely to be sufficiently equipped to make accurate ecological predictions of how natural communities will respond to climatic change. This is problematic because biotic interactions (e.g. predation, competition, resource-consumer interactions, host-parasite interactions, mutualism and facilitation) have been shown to affect large-scale distribution patterns of species and thus mediate their ability to cope with climatic change. The FORECOMM project – Forecasting community-level responses to global change – will help address this gap by using a modelling framework to integrate existing data about climatic change, species distributions, community composition and biotic interactions to synthesize new understanding about how communities will respond to a changing world. This project will 1) build upon existing methods and develop new approaches to infer and integrate biotic interactions into predictive models; 2) develop novel procedures to test model predictions; 3) Assess the impact of incorporating biotic interactions in predictive models by re-analysing a series of key published case studies assessing the potential impacts of climate change on species distributions.

Keywords: biogeography,community ecology,macroecology,species distribution models,biotic interactions,phylogenetics,functional traits,networks,null models