Project description
Understanding how the synaptic active zone tunes brain resilience
Resilience, the brain's capacity to manage stress, is intricately connected to sleep, and sleep deprivation has been associated with potential neurodegeneration. However, there are knowledge gaps in bridging molecular and cellular aspects with behavioural and organismic levels. The EU-funded SynProtect project investigates the phenomenon of PreScale, i.e. presynaptic active zone plasticity, which is triggered widely in the brain of sleep-deprived Drosophila and enhances resilience to cope with sleep deprivation. The project explores whether PreScale globally remodels presynaptic terminals to adjust resilience states and explore its regulatory role in presynaptic terminals and local excitability via potassium channels. Using advanced imaging and proteomic tools, SynProtect seeks to provide insights into how PreScale contributes to brain resilience by analysing brain activity, signalling and metabolism.
Objective
Resilience designates the ability of the brain to cope with and adapt to stressful situations. Sleep homeostasis is tightly linked to resilience, and the sleep deficits observed alongside neurodegeneration probably operate as direct drivers of neurodegeneration. However, the knowledge gaps still remain huge and causally bridging the molecular/cellular with the behavioral and organismic level remains a challenge, hampering progress equally for biomedical and basic research.
Our recent data suggest that a form of presynaptic active zone plasticity (PreScale), widely triggered in sleep-deprived Drosophila brains, can enhance the brain resilience to cope with the adverse effects of sleep deprivation. Concretely, genetically fostering PreScale in sleepless mutants rescued them from their reduced lifetime, stress sensitivity, cognitive deficits and hyperexcitability due to too low levels of voltage-gated potassium channels.
In SynProtect, we seek to test our hypothesis that PreScale constitutes a globally-operating homeostatic plasticity mechanism remodeling presynaptic terminals comprehensively to tune resilience states.
In order to test this idea, we will elucidate the core molecular scenario executing and bidirectionally regulating PreScale and, consequently, decipher how exactly the remodeling of the mere presynaptic active zones and local excitability tuning via potassium channels intersect at the presynaptic terminal. In parallel, we will test whether PreScale is needed to enhance resilience in a brainwide fashion or if its modus operandi is more local. Genetic manipulation of PreScale will allow us to define brain states of high and
low resilience, which we will dissect combining super-resolution and in vivo activity imaging and proteomic tools. Thus, we will open the way towards a comprehensive insight into the activity, signaling and metabolic profile of brain resilience.
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 neurobiology
- natural sciences chemical sciences inorganic chemistry alkali metals
- natural sciences physical sciences optics microscopy super resolution microscopy
- natural sciences chemical sciences inorganic chemistry post-transition metals
- medical and health sciences basic medicine physiology homeostasis
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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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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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2022-ADG
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14195 Berlin
Germany
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