Project description
Understanding how collective properties influence cell decisions
Biological systems are complex due to their regulation across multiple levels of organisation. Errors in this regulation can lead to tissue and organ malformations as well as disease. Local signals and collective tissue properties influence cell decisions, but current methods for identifying and controlling these properties are lacking. The ERC-funded CoRe project will apply principles of collective behaviour from physics to identify cell parameters that can be used to engineer tissue physical properties in vivo for the first time. Using zebrafish as a model, the project will investigate the collective regulation of cell polarity and fate decisions at the single-cell level and derive general principles of multi-cell decision-making. The findings will advance disease treatment strategies.
Objective
Developing systems show an unmatched complexity due to an entangled regulation across different levels of organization. Errors in this regulation often lead to tissue and organ malformations and disease. Accordingly, cell decisions like division, fate or motility are not only guided by local signals generated at the cell micro-environment, but also integrate cues propagated by collective properties at the tissue-level, such as tissue rigidity. How the cells macro-environment impacts cell decisions is still elusive, largely because we lack methods and concepts to identify and eventually control collective tissue properties. I will tackle this question by harnessing the physics of collective behaviours as design principles for synthetic in vivo developmental biology. We build on our discovery that embryonic tissue rigidity emerges via phase transitions, only when a simple cell parameter, cell connectivity, reaches a specific but generic value, the critical point. By identifying the responsible cell parameters and their critical points, we will build tools to tune those parameters, engineer for the first time, a set of tissue physical properties in vivo and explore their role in cell decisions. We will use the developing zebrafish as a model and: Quantitatively map cell parameters and the critical points at which tissue properties emerge; Control tissue properties by opto-genetically tuning the responsible cell parameters in relation to the critical points; Dissect mechanisms of collective regulation of cell polarity and fate decisions at single-cell resolution; Derive generic principles of multiple cell decision-making by comparing species operating near or far from critical points. Uncovering how collective properties impact cell decisions will reveal mechanisms of tissue development transcending biological scales, generate new hypotheses of how developing systems optimise biological functions, and inform strategies for tissue engineering and disease treatment.
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.
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Keywords
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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Topic(s)
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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.
Funding Scheme
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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.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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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-2024-STG
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69117 Heidelberg
Germany
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