Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English en
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2024-06-16

The Mouse Major Urinary Proteins complex: an ideal model to investigate animal pheromonal communication and human allergy.

Objective

Aims: a) to study how the diverse biological functions of the recombinant lipocalin Major Urinary Protein (rMUP) including the ability to bind pheromones and odours and its pheromonal and allergen activity correlate with and are modulated by its structural and molecular dynamic features. b) to complete the training in Structural Biology focusing biomedical/biotechnological applications. a1) The request of new and more specific artificial sensors in food industry or environment control is increasing. MUPs bi ological activity is associated to the binding of hydrophobic molecules inside their pocket. A goal is to pin down the residues involved in binding and selectivity. Based on this knowledge we will design new mutants characterized by specific affinity for s elected compounds. a2) More than 20% of the population in industrialized countries suffer of allergies. MUPs are potent human allergens. Peptides encompassing portions of rMUP will be studied in search of the epitope(s) responsible for this pathological ef fect. This will allow to develop safer and more tolerable preparation for immunotheraphy. a3) The folding process of proteins is yet not understood. The beta-barrel lipocalins pose challenging questions since they may acquire non-native intermediate confor mational states. Unveiling the structure and dynamics of these states will be important to further the knowledge on the molecular mechanisms associated to protein folding and will allow to better understand how MUPs and lipocalins at large can carry out th ose so diversified biological functions. b1) To tackle biomedical or biotechnological problems it requires the combined use of structural biology tools: protein engineering and immunological techniques, multinuclear multidimensional NMR, fluorescence and c ircular dichroism spectroscopy. Therefore, this highly multidisciplinary project will provide the ground to complete, in the more comprehensive way, the training in basic and applied structural biology.

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.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

Topic(s)

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.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

FP6-2004-MOBILITY-7
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

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.

IIF - Marie Curie actions-Incoming International Fellowships

Coordinator

UNIVERSITY OF PARMA
EU contribution
No data
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data
My booklet 0 0