ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

The Arctic has risen to global attention in recent years, as it has been reconfigured through debates about global environmental change, resource extraction and disputes over sovereign rights. Within these discourses, little attention has been paid to the cultures of the Arctic. Indeed, it often seems as if the Circumpolar Arctic in global public understanding remains framed as a 'natural region' - that is, a place where the environment dominates the creation of culture. This framing has consequences for the region, because through this the Arctic becomes constructed as a space where people are absent. This proposal aims to discover how and why this might be so. The proposal argues that this construction of the Arctic emerged from the exploration of the region by Europeans and North Americans and their contacts with indigenous people from the middle of the eighteenth century. Particular texts, cartographic representations and objects were collected and returned to sites like London, Copenhagen, Berlin and Philadelphia. The construction of the Arctic thereby became entwined within the growth of colonial museum cultures and, indeed, western modernity. This project aims to delineate the networks and collecting cultures involved in this creation of Arctic Cultures. It will bring repositories in colonial metropoles into dialogue with sites of collection in the Arctic by tracing the contexts of discovery and memorialisation. In doing so, it aspires to a new understanding of the consequences of certain forms of colonial representation for debates about the Circumpolar Arctic today. The project involves research by the Principal Investigator and four Post Doctoral Researchers at museums, archives, libraries and repositories across Europe and North America, as well as in Greenland and the Canadian Arctic. A Project Assistant based in Oxford will help facilitate the completion of the research.

1 996 250 €

Start date: 2017-10-01, End date: 2022-09-30

Carbon and water in its various states of matter make up a substantial proportion of our Universe. The two materials are highly dissimilar with respect to their chemical and physical properties. Elemental carbon is even often referred to as a hydrophobic, ‘water-hating’ material. Yet, the two materials often coexist and critical processes take place at the interface between these unlike chemical species. This includes the hydration shells of hydrophobic moieties in biomolecules, clathrate hydrate materials where water molecules crystallise around hydrophobic guest species as well as icy comets which are often black due to the presence of carbon at their surfaces. The aim of the CARBONICE project is to investigate the interface and interplay between water and carbon in detail. Using new and innovative experimental strategies, the water molecule will be placed in a variety of different yet highly relevant carbon environments. This will give us unprecedented insights into how water hydrates hydrophobic species which is highly important in the context of hydrophobic interactions. Investigations into how carbon species influence phase transitions of ice will give new insights into crystallisation phenomena but will also reveal the factors that lead to the formation of either ferro- or antiferroelectric ices. Creating carbon – ice composites in the lab as they exist on comets will enable us to understand the complex weather cycles on comets and may help explaining the unusual surface features recently identified by the Rosetta space probe. In summary, this truly multidisciplinary project opens up a new spyhole to critically important processes at the water – carbon interface. The results will have an impact on the space, atmospheric and general materials sciences but will also be highly relevant with respect to further optimising the computer models of water as well as understanding the properties of water in nano-confinements and how it drives biological processes.

1 999 806 €

Start date: 2017-06-01, End date: 2022-05-31

Transient multivalent interactions are critical for biological processes such as signaling pathways controlling chromatin function. Chromatin, the nucleoprotein complex organizing the genome, is dynamically regulated by post-translational modifications (PTMs) of the chromatin fiber. Protein effectors interact with combinations of these PTMs through multivalent interactions, deposit novel PTMs, thereby propagate signaling cascades and remodel chromatin structure. To reveal the underlying molecular mechanisms, methods outside classical biochemistry are required, in particular due to the combinational complexity of chromatin PTMs and the transient supramolecular interactions crucial for their recognition. Here, we develop a novel approach, where we synthesize arrays of chemically defined designer chromatin fibers and use dynamic multiplex single-molecule imaging to dissect multivalent signaling processes in chromatin. Our studies target a key pathway, the DNA damage response (DDR), which regulates DNA repair processes central to cell survival and is critically implicated in cancer. Detailed knowledge is of utmost importance to develop targeted therapeutic interventions. We thus employ advanced peptide and protein chemistry to generate libraries of chromatin fibers of a defined PTM state that is encoded in the chromatin DNA. With the library immobilized in a flow cell, we use single-molecule detection to directly observe signaling processes by key DDR effectors in real time. Subsequent in situ polony decoding allows the identification of each chromatin fiber’s modification state, enabling broad sampling of signaling outcomes. Finally, we use dynamic computational models to integrate the effector-chromatin interaction network and test key mechanisms in cancer-based cell culture. Together, these methods will yield fundamental insight into chromatin and DDR signaling and will be of broad use for chemical and biomedical research with applications beyond the chromatin field.

1 999 815 €

Start date: 2017-05-01, End date: 2022-10-31

By viewing a scientific problem through the lens of heritage, COMPLEX will create an entirely new cross-disciplinary vision for understanding and modelling polymer degradation and build a world leading research team studying the degradation of modern polymeric objects in collections. Rather than focussing on specific chemical or physical processes, as has been done in the past, COMPLEX will consider polymeric objects as almost akin to living organisms, and by using a system dynamics approach will model objects in their environments in a way that reflects their real complexity, with multiple, inter-connecting interactions between material properties and environmental parameters. As a polymer chemist, this project has been inspired by my 4 years of experience in the field of heritage, in particular by experiencing the problems raised by the conservation of modern polymeric objects such as plastics. The development of modern polymers during the 19th and 20th centuries has changed history and society and they are a part of our material heritage that it is essential to conserve for future generations. However, these objects are at risk due to their instability and a lack of knowledge within the museum sector as to their degradation behaviour. System dynamics models will be developed incorporating multiple chemical and physical interactions between the components of polymeric objects and environmental parameters such as relative humidity or light. These will be used to predict the degradation behaviour of objects over time, to identify key parameters that are correlated to object change and provide practical solutions for heritage professionals. Above all, COMPLEX will provide a new way of looking at polymer degradation, that can be applied across a wide range of fields, including medicine, waste management and industry.

1 499 394 €

Start date: 2017-04-01, End date: 2022-03-31