European Research Council
Starting grant competition - life sciences
Almost €580 million (£491 million) has been awarded by the ERC in its third starting grant competition, via awards of up to €2 million to early career researchers. Listed below are a number of UK-based winners in the life sciences.
• Award winner: Francois Balloux
• Institution: Imperial College London
Building an integrated genetic infectious disease epidemiology approach
• Award winner: Sonia Bishop
• Institution: University of Cambridge
Neurocognitive mechanisms of human anxiety: identifying and targeting disrupted function
• Award winner: Joanna Coast
• Institution: University of Birmingham
The economic evaluation of end-of-life care
• Award winner: Frederic Geissmann
• Institution: King's College London
In vivo biology of the mononuclear phagocyte system: a molecular and functional approach
• Award winner: Adam Giangreco
• Institution: University College London
The role of tumour suppressor of lung cancer 1 (TSLC1) signalling in lung repair and cancer-associated epithelial-mesenchymal transitions (EMTs)
• Award winner: Stephan Gruber
• Institution: University of Oxford
Untangling the bacterial chromosome: condensin's role in sister chromosome separation and its mechanisms
• Award winner: Angelika Grundling
• Institution: Imperial College London
Functional analysis of listeria and staphylococcus lipoteichoic acid
• Award winner: Keisuke Kaji
• Institution: University of Edinburgh
Dissection of molecular signature transformation during the process of pluripotency induction
• Award winner: Achillefs Kapanidis
• Institution: University of Oxford
Single-molecule analysis of DNA polymerase in vitro and in vivo: a machine in action
• Award winner: Ulrich Felix Keyser
• Institution: University of Cambridge
Passive membrane transport of organic compounds
• Award winner: Toomas Kivisild
• Institution: University of Cambridge
An interdisciplinary approach for identifying evolutionary active regions in the human genome
• Award winner: Nikolaus Kriegeskorte
• Institution: Medical Research Council
Visual object population codes relating human brains to nonhuman and computational models with representational similarity analysis
• Award winner: Suman Lata
• Institution: University of Bristol
Mechanics of ESCRT-III mediated membrane scission
• Award winner: Eric Alexander Miska
• Institution: University of Cambridge
sRNA regulatory networks
• Award winner: Sergey Nejentsev
• Institution: University of Cambridge
Understanding genetic control of global gene expression in human macrophages to discover new immune mechanisms protecting from tuberculosis
• Award winner: Lori Anne Passmore
• Institution: Medical Research Council
Macromolecular machines that regulate mRNA poly(A) tails: mechanisms of polyadenylation and deadenylation
• Award winner: Stefano Pluchino
• Institution: University of Cambridge
Secreted membrane vesicles: role in the therapeutic plasticity of neural stem cells
• Award winner: Sarah Polonius-Teichmann
• Institution: Medical Research Council
Decoding genetic switches in T helper cell differentiation
• Award winner: Markus Ralser
• Institution: University of Cambridge
System-wide analysis of regulatory processes that mediate at the border of metabolome and proteome
• Award winner: Jens Olaf Rolff
• Institution: University of Sheffield
Multi-drug resistance and the evolutionary ecology of insect immunity
• Award winner: Mala Shah
• Institution: School of Pharmacy, University of London
Investigating the role of pre-synaptic HCN1 channels in regulating cortical synaptic transmission and plasticity
• Award winner: Francesco Simonetti
• Institution: Imperial College London
Breast ultrasound tomography for the early detection of cancer
• Award winner: Simon Nicholas Waddington
• Institution: University College London
Easy and rapid generation of light-emitting somatic-transgenic mice to monitor specific disease states and to screen effective drugs
• Award winner: Heather Whitney
• Institution: University of Bristol
The adaptive advantages, evolution and development of iridescence in leaves
IN DETAIL
• Award winner: Judith Elizabeth Mank
• Institution: University of Oxford
The genomic and transcriptomic locus of sex-specific selection in birds
Although it is widely understood that genes contribute to the phenotypes that form the basis of selection, the nature and process of the relationship between the two remains largely theoretical. By harnessing emergent DNA sequencing technologies, this project will measure evolutionary change in gene expression and coding sequence in response to different sex-specific selection regimes in a clade of birds with divergent mating systems. It will seek to create a cohesive integrated understanding of the relationship between evolution, the genome and the animal form. The work will be complemented by the development of mathematical models of sex-specific evolution.