Project description
Bats can unlock the secrets of longevity and virus resistance
Ageing and infectious diseases impose severe medical, financial, and emotional burdens on societies worldwide. Despite extensive research, solutions to extend human healthspan and prevent infection-related damage remain elusive. Remarkably, bats, the only flying mammals, offer a unique model. They not only exhibit extraordinary longevity with minimal age-related diseases but also tolerate viruses asymptomatically due to unique immune adaptations. The ERC-funded BATPROTECT project aims to unravel these mysteries by studying bats’ molecular mechanisms for longevity and viral tolerance. By generating high-quality bat genomes and developing advanced animal models, BATPROTECT seeks to uncover key factors behind extended healthspan and disease resistance, ultimately informing new therapeutic strategies for humans.
Objective
The medical, financial, and emotional costs imposed by ageing and infectious diseases are major challenges for our societies. Strikingly, while past research has not provided solutions for extending human healthspan and preventing the harmful consequences of infections, nature has solved both problems in the only flying mammals – the bats. Among mammals, bats exhibit an exceptional longevity with little signs of age-related diseases. Despite being reservoirs for numerous deadly viruses, viral infections in bats are mostly asymptomatic due to unique immune system adaptations. The overarching goal of BATPROTECT is to achieve breakthroughs in our understanding of the molecular basis of bats’ extended healthspan and disease resistance to ultimately discover new directions to improve human healthspan and disease outcome. BATPROTECT integrates a team of world-leading experts in bat biology, genomics, immunology and gerontology to synergistically: (i) elucidate the molecular mechanisms that bats use to slow down expected ageing; (ii) identify the driving molecular mechanisms behind bats’ viral tolerance and limited age-related inflammation; (iii) uncover the genomic basis and evolution of extended healthspan and disease tolerance in bats; and, (iv) develop transgenic animal models to functionally validate the uncovered bat adaptations. We will generate 150 reference quality bat genomes, the novel immunological, bioinformatic, cellular and molecular tools required to take an integrative multi-omics approach and uncover the age and immune changes that occur in wild and captive bats across the ageing spectrum. We will identify the top regulators of longevity and immunity, using deep neural networks analyses, to functionally validate in our cellular systems and novel transgenic animal models- BatWorms and BatMice. Ultimately, we will provide a deeper understanding of extended healthspan and disease resistance and will pave the way for future therapeutics.
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.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologyvirology
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicineimmunology
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicinegerontology
- natural sciencesbiological scienceszoologymammalogy
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesgeneticsgenomes
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Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC-SYG - HORIZON ERC Synergy GrantsHost institution
4 Dublin
Ireland