Project acronym BICAEHFID
Project Biogeographic and cultural adaptations of early humans during the first intercontinental dispersals
Researcher (PI) Ignacio DE LA TORRE
Host Institution (HI) AGENCIA ESTATAL CONSEJO SUPERIOR DEINVESTIGACIONES CIENTIFICAS
Country Spain
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH6, ERC-2018-ADG
Summary Our understanding of the emergence and dispersal of the earliest tool-making hominins has been revolutionised in the last decade, with sites in eastern Africa and China pushing both events more than half a million years earlier than previously thought. Traditional models linking biological speciation, cultural innovation and migration events with climatic pulses have remained theoretical, and recent discoveries suggest that the picture of the earliest human colonization across the Old World is far more complex, demanding heuristic approaches to understand the biogeography and adaptive behaviours of early humans.
This project will be the first substantive attempt to produce a global synthesis of earliest human occupation dynamics by comparing the world’s longest sequences of early archaeological sites, namely eastern Africa and China. Our objective is to understand the alternative evolutionary trajectories adopted by hominins that shared an overarching biological and cultural background, but who faced different climatic and biogeographic challenges and opportunities.
The ambition of our global-scale objectives is accompanied by the unmatched quality of our datasets and the ground-breaking perspective we will adopt in their study. Fieldwork in the two most renowned sequences in each region alongside a primary study of additional top-quality assemblages in both subcontinents, will be combined with extensive metadata sets to produce comprehensive views of temporal trends and paleoecological patterns. Our state-of-the-art methodological sets (which combine an exceptionally diverse range of disciplines from geochemistry to niche modelling) and ground-breaking analytical perspective (which considers data from micro-stratigraphy to satellite imaging) will enable us to develop new approaches to challenge established paradigms and produce a new picture of the biogeographic adaptations of early stone-tool makers.
Summary
Our understanding of the emergence and dispersal of the earliest tool-making hominins has been revolutionised in the last decade, with sites in eastern Africa and China pushing both events more than half a million years earlier than previously thought. Traditional models linking biological speciation, cultural innovation and migration events with climatic pulses have remained theoretical, and recent discoveries suggest that the picture of the earliest human colonization across the Old World is far more complex, demanding heuristic approaches to understand the biogeography and adaptive behaviours of early humans.
This project will be the first substantive attempt to produce a global synthesis of earliest human occupation dynamics by comparing the world’s longest sequences of early archaeological sites, namely eastern Africa and China. Our objective is to understand the alternative evolutionary trajectories adopted by hominins that shared an overarching biological and cultural background, but who faced different climatic and biogeographic challenges and opportunities.
The ambition of our global-scale objectives is accompanied by the unmatched quality of our datasets and the ground-breaking perspective we will adopt in their study. Fieldwork in the two most renowned sequences in each region alongside a primary study of additional top-quality assemblages in both subcontinents, will be combined with extensive metadata sets to produce comprehensive views of temporal trends and paleoecological patterns. Our state-of-the-art methodological sets (which combine an exceptionally diverse range of disciplines from geochemistry to niche modelling) and ground-breaking analytical perspective (which considers data from micro-stratigraphy to satellite imaging) will enable us to develop new approaches to challenge established paradigms and produce a new picture of the biogeographic adaptations of early stone-tool makers.
Max ERC Funding
2 499 996 €
Duration
Start date: 2019-10-01, End date: 2024-09-30
Project acronym PLANTGROWTH
Project Exploiting genome replication to design improved plant growth strategies
Researcher (PI) Crisanto GUTIERREZ
Host Institution (HI) AGENCIA ESTATAL CONSEJO SUPERIOR DEINVESTIGACIONES CIENTIFICAS
Country Spain
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), LS9, ERC-2018-ADG
Summary This project will identify the principles governing genome replication in relation to the chromatin landscape and how they impact on plant organ growth. The results will provide the basis to design novel strategies to improve plant growth performance.
The large plant genomes, as in all eukaryotes, must be faithfully duplicated every cell cycle, a process regulated at the level of DNA replication origins (ORIs). Our understanding of how ORIs are determined is still very limited. Most of our knowledge comes from cultured cells, precluding the identification of regulatory layers operating at the organism level. Importantly, genome replication can offer unexplored possibilities to modulate plant architecture and growth and, consequently, plant performance.
Results generated so far unable us to address a fundamental question: what are the regulatory mechanisms of DNA and genome replication and how they can be exploited to design improved plant growth strategies. This innovative perspective will reveal how genome replication is regulated by DNA sequence context, replication factors and chromatin landscape. Integration of molecular, cellular, genomic and genetic approaches in a whole organism will serve to evaluate the phenotypic effects of modulating genome replication on organ growth. We will also learn how DNA replication control is exerted during endoreplication and in coordination with transcriptional programs, both crucial for plant organogenesis, growth and response to environmental stresses.
This program goes beyond incremental research, is timely, innovative, ambitious but realistic, and high risk/high gain, combining different approaches to address a fundamental process. Given the conservation of proteins and pathways, and the availability of well-annotated genomic information for many plant species, PLANTGROWTH will pave the way to translate the technological and conceptual know-how derived from this program to crop species to improve yield.
Summary
This project will identify the principles governing genome replication in relation to the chromatin landscape and how they impact on plant organ growth. The results will provide the basis to design novel strategies to improve plant growth performance.
The large plant genomes, as in all eukaryotes, must be faithfully duplicated every cell cycle, a process regulated at the level of DNA replication origins (ORIs). Our understanding of how ORIs are determined is still very limited. Most of our knowledge comes from cultured cells, precluding the identification of regulatory layers operating at the organism level. Importantly, genome replication can offer unexplored possibilities to modulate plant architecture and growth and, consequently, plant performance.
Results generated so far unable us to address a fundamental question: what are the regulatory mechanisms of DNA and genome replication and how they can be exploited to design improved plant growth strategies. This innovative perspective will reveal how genome replication is regulated by DNA sequence context, replication factors and chromatin landscape. Integration of molecular, cellular, genomic and genetic approaches in a whole organism will serve to evaluate the phenotypic effects of modulating genome replication on organ growth. We will also learn how DNA replication control is exerted during endoreplication and in coordination with transcriptional programs, both crucial for plant organogenesis, growth and response to environmental stresses.
This program goes beyond incremental research, is timely, innovative, ambitious but realistic, and high risk/high gain, combining different approaches to address a fundamental process. Given the conservation of proteins and pathways, and the availability of well-annotated genomic information for many plant species, PLANTGROWTH will pave the way to translate the technological and conceptual know-how derived from this program to crop species to improve yield.
Max ERC Funding
2 497 800 €
Duration
Start date: 2019-06-01, End date: 2024-05-31
Project acronym SILK-EYE
Project Silk-based ocular implants: treating eye conditions at the interface of photonics and biology
Researcher (PI) Susana Marcos Celestino
Host Institution (HI) AGENCIA ESTATAL CONSEJO SUPERIOR DEINVESTIGACIONES CIENTIFICAS
Country Spain
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), LS7, ERC-2018-ADG
Summary Prevalent eye diseases, such as myopia, presbyopia, and corneal disease affect millions worldwide, but for now cannot be prevented. Surgical interventions of these conditions are turning to additive surgery, exemplified by corneal implants or the replacement of the natural crystalline lens by (or addition of) an intraocular lens, as it reduces complications of tissue removal surgeries.
Current eye treatments involving adding tissue or lenses exist in the form of amnion bandages, corneal inlays, and intraocular lenses. However, those approaches suffer from a number of shortcomings: corneal haze or rejection; risk of disease transmission, short lifespan, need of cryopreservation and donor tissue; lack of compliance of lens designs and biomaterials. In particular, no material has been found that fully meets the requirements for mechanical properties, transparency, biocompatibility and versatility for applications in the cornea and in accommodating intraocular lenses.
In recent years, silk fibroin derived from silkworm cocoons has emerged as a protein polymer for biomaterial applications. SILK-EYE will develop a new generation of corneal and intraocular implants, using silk-based materials tuned to each specific application and light enabling procedure. The silk-based implants will feature both the accessibility advantages of synthetic materials and the structural and biocompatibility properties of allografts, capitalizing on silk’s unique potential for transparency, controllable stiffness and degradability, refractive index and permeability, and their potential for light-induced cross-linking and bonding in the eye. SILK-EYE will design radically novel corneal dressings and implants, and accommodating intraocular lenses that are more biocompatible and functional than current synthetic implants, and are safer, more tunable, accessible and affordable than donor allografts, potentially revolutionizing how the major corrective procedures in ophthalmology are performed.
Summary
Prevalent eye diseases, such as myopia, presbyopia, and corneal disease affect millions worldwide, but for now cannot be prevented. Surgical interventions of these conditions are turning to additive surgery, exemplified by corneal implants or the replacement of the natural crystalline lens by (or addition of) an intraocular lens, as it reduces complications of tissue removal surgeries.
Current eye treatments involving adding tissue or lenses exist in the form of amnion bandages, corneal inlays, and intraocular lenses. However, those approaches suffer from a number of shortcomings: corneal haze or rejection; risk of disease transmission, short lifespan, need of cryopreservation and donor tissue; lack of compliance of lens designs and biomaterials. In particular, no material has been found that fully meets the requirements for mechanical properties, transparency, biocompatibility and versatility for applications in the cornea and in accommodating intraocular lenses.
In recent years, silk fibroin derived from silkworm cocoons has emerged as a protein polymer for biomaterial applications. SILK-EYE will develop a new generation of corneal and intraocular implants, using silk-based materials tuned to each specific application and light enabling procedure. The silk-based implants will feature both the accessibility advantages of synthetic materials and the structural and biocompatibility properties of allografts, capitalizing on silk’s unique potential for transparency, controllable stiffness and degradability, refractive index and permeability, and their potential for light-induced cross-linking and bonding in the eye. SILK-EYE will design radically novel corneal dressings and implants, and accommodating intraocular lenses that are more biocompatible and functional than current synthetic implants, and are safer, more tunable, accessible and affordable than donor allografts, potentially revolutionizing how the major corrective procedures in ophthalmology are performed.
Max ERC Funding
2 499 610 €
Duration
Start date: 2020-01-01, End date: 2024-12-31
Project acronym SUMMIT
Project Novel roles of dimethylated sulphur in marine microbial interactions
Researcher (PI) Rafael (Rafel) SIMO
Host Institution (HI) AGENCIA ESTATAL CONSEJO SUPERIOR DEINVESTIGACIONES CIENTIFICAS
Country Spain
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), LS8, ERC-2018-ADG
Summary Sulphur is an essential element for life that cycles rapidly in the pelagic ocean in the form of biogenic dimethylated compounds. Over three decades, dimethylated sulphur has been intensively investigated for its emission to the atmosphere and its suggested roles in returning sulphur to continents and in climate regulation. While the climate connection still awaits definitive confirmation or denial, these research efforts have provided important advances in plankton physiology and ecology, since these forms of sulphur arise from organism adaptation to saline and sunlit waters and are integral to the food web machinery. Previous studies have disclosed biochemical and trophic cycling pathways and their taxonomic affiliations. Also, evidence for their behaviour as infochemicals in organism-organism communication has been obtained. However, their contribution to the functioning of marine ecosystems remains largely unexplored, particularly with respect to the emerging renewed picture of food webs, where classical functional roles blur and concepts like multifunctional organisms and interdependence become the rule rather than the exception. I propose to bridge microbial physiology, ecology and biogeochemistry to explore new roles of dimethylated sulphur in microbial food-web interactions. I will build upon a combination of molecular tools, isotopes, single-cell analyses, physiological dyes, chemotaxis experiments, modelling, sea-going opportunities and an existing collection of samples from diverse oceanic biomes. Hypothesis-driven research is expected to yield paradigm shifts in (i) phytoplankton-bacteria interactions through nitrogen fixation and vitamin exchange; (ii) phytoplankton-phytoplankton interactions to overcome energy limitation to growth; (iii) phytoplankton-herbivore interactions for selective grazing on weakened prey. Overall, I intend to assess if interactions through dimethylated sulphur make microbial food-webs more robust and efficient.
Summary
Sulphur is an essential element for life that cycles rapidly in the pelagic ocean in the form of biogenic dimethylated compounds. Over three decades, dimethylated sulphur has been intensively investigated for its emission to the atmosphere and its suggested roles in returning sulphur to continents and in climate regulation. While the climate connection still awaits definitive confirmation or denial, these research efforts have provided important advances in plankton physiology and ecology, since these forms of sulphur arise from organism adaptation to saline and sunlit waters and are integral to the food web machinery. Previous studies have disclosed biochemical and trophic cycling pathways and their taxonomic affiliations. Also, evidence for their behaviour as infochemicals in organism-organism communication has been obtained. However, their contribution to the functioning of marine ecosystems remains largely unexplored, particularly with respect to the emerging renewed picture of food webs, where classical functional roles blur and concepts like multifunctional organisms and interdependence become the rule rather than the exception. I propose to bridge microbial physiology, ecology and biogeochemistry to explore new roles of dimethylated sulphur in microbial food-web interactions. I will build upon a combination of molecular tools, isotopes, single-cell analyses, physiological dyes, chemotaxis experiments, modelling, sea-going opportunities and an existing collection of samples from diverse oceanic biomes. Hypothesis-driven research is expected to yield paradigm shifts in (i) phytoplankton-bacteria interactions through nitrogen fixation and vitamin exchange; (ii) phytoplankton-phytoplankton interactions to overcome energy limitation to growth; (iii) phytoplankton-herbivore interactions for selective grazing on weakened prey. Overall, I intend to assess if interactions through dimethylated sulphur make microbial food-webs more robust and efficient.
Max ERC Funding
2 499 187 €
Duration
Start date: 2019-09-01, End date: 2024-08-31
