Project description
Novel cellular components in cell division
Meiosis is the process of cell division during reproduction, where chromosomes line up next to each other, allowing for the exchange of genetic material and contributing to genetic diversity in the offspring. Funded by the European Research Council, the ZygoCiliaAct project aims to delineate the mechanisms that regulate chromosome pairing. The project will capitalise on the recent discovery of a previously unrecognised cilium – the zygotene cilium – that protrudes from the oocyte and spermatocyte and interacts with the meiotic chromosomes. Researchers aim to uncover the functional mechanical and regulatory components of the zygotene cilium and decipher the signals that govern meiosis, thereby advancing our knowledge on developmental biology and reproduction.
Objective
A hallmark of meiosis is chromosomal pairing, which for decades has been a major focus in the field. However, the nuclear events of meiosis occur in the cellular context of a differentiating gamete, and pairing depends on cytoplasmic counterparts, by mechanisms that are conserved from yeast to mammals. These are essential for fertility, but how cytoplasmic counterparts of chromosomal pairing are regulated has remained enigmatic. We uncovered a previously unrecognized cilium in meiosis – the zygotene cilium, in both males and females and in zebrafish and the mouse, which completes the mechanical cytoplasmic pairing machinery, and extracellularly extend between oocytes within a conserved cellular hub, called the germline cyst. We established the ground-breaking observations that the cilium is essential for chromosomal pairing, prophase progression and cyst morphogenesis, ovary development and fertility. These uncover the novel concept of a cilium as a critical player in meiosis, propose a cellular paradigm that cilia can control chromosomal dynamics, and shed new light on reproduction phenotypes in human ciliopathies.
The zygotene cilium now allows us to zoom-out from the nuclear events of prophase to the complete cellular and developmental program of meiosis. Utilizing our holistic morphological approach in-vivo, ZygoCiliaAct will ambitiously achieve this goal in three related but independent aims. We will uncover zygotene cilium functional mechanical and regulatory components (Aim 1), decipher the ciliary developmental signals that govern meiotic prophase progression and cyst morphogenesis (Aim 2), and expand our findings to investigation in testes, as well as use zebrafish as a new model to decipher mechanisms of human ciliopathic proteins (Aim 3). With ZygoCiliaAct we are finally poised to break new grounds in unraveling long-sought-after fundamental questions cell, developmental, cilia, and reproductive biology, and advance reproduction and ciliopathy medicine.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences biological sciences biochemistry biomolecules proteins
- social sciences sociology demography fertility
- natural sciences biological sciences genetics heredity
- natural sciences biological sciences genetics chromosomes
- natural sciences biological sciences reproductive biology
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
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(opens in new window) ERC-2022-COG
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91904 Jerusalem
Israel
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