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Tracing the evolution of sensory cell types in animal diversity: multidisciplinary training in 3D cellular reconstruction, multimodal data analysis and science outreach.

Project description

The evolution of sensory organs across the animal kingdom

Animals possess diverse sensory organs and cell types, enabling them to perceive their environments and thrive in their ecological niches. Accumulating evidence has provided important insight into the development and differentiation of these cells in different animals. Funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the ZooCELL project is interested in the evolution of these cell types across different animal phyla. Through a multidisciplinary and collaborative approach that combines genomics and artificial intelligence, researchers across Europe will analyse molecular and morphological features of sensory cells. The aim is to create a unified understanding of how sensory cells have evolved.

Objective

All animals need to sense their environments. The ability to detect light, temperature, chemicals, sound, vibrations and other stimuli depends on an extraordinary range of sensory cell types. The diversity and relationships between these receptor cells across the animal phyla, the ways in which they have been adapted, reused, tweaked and sometimes lost, is little known, but is crucial for understanding how animals survive and thrive in diverse environments. Most sensory cells are characterised by complex shapes and molecular machinery, first discovered by meticulous electron microscopy in the past decades. More recently, this has been complemented by genetic studies of their development and differentiation in various animal models. These two research programmes have, however, largely remained separate, and a unified morphological and molecular understanding of how the diversity of animal sensory cells has evolved is lacking. Our aim in ZooCELL is to create a comprehensive view of sensory cell type evolution based on the discovery of recurrent patterns of genetic and subcellular structure across a wide range of new animal models. To this end, we will combine single-cell genomics, correlative light and electron microscopy, Artificial Intelligence, and reverse genetics approaches in these species. ZooCELL will bring together Europes world-leading expertise in these disciplines, and thus contribute to building the field of comparative integrative cell biology in animals. While training the next generation of doctoral students in these novel interdisciplinary techniques, we will develop new tools for combined molecular and morphological comparative analyses of cell types. Our interdisciplinary, intersectoral and international training programme will also include dissemination and public outreach, and the comprehensive training provided will enable our graduate students to assume leadership roles in academia, industry and science outreach.

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-DN - HORIZON TMA MSCA Doctoral Networks

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2022-DN-01

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Coordinator

EUROPEAN MOLECULAR BIOLOGY LABORATORY
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 781 617,60
Address
Meyerhofstrasse 1
69117 Heidelberg
Germany

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Region
Baden-Württemberg Karlsruhe Heidelberg, Stadtkreis
Activity type
Research Organisations
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Total cost

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Participants (6)

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