Grants for twenty-eight applications within Open Competition ENW-XS

Description

The NWO Domain Board Science has awarded 28 applications in the Open Competition Domain Science – XS round 24-1. The themes vary from developing placental models to a search for new antibiotics from plants, and from researching whether stress increases the risk of Parkinson's to developing a new mesh-free method called Walk-on-spheres (WoS) to solve partial differential equations.

ENW-XS will continue in 2024. For more information Open Competition Domain Science – XS in 2024, please visit  this page. The next ENW-XS deadline is 14 May 2024.

The awarded applications (in alphabetical order of applicant):

Uncovering a new weapon against the untreatable human fungal pathogen Candida auris.
Dr. S. (Sonja) Billerbeck (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)
Multidrug-resistant fungal pathogens present a serious threat to human health. One of these is Candida auris which causes frequent outbreaks in healthcare settings, killing up to 60% of the patients it infects as it is hard to diagnose and resistant to available antifungals. We urgently need new treatments! We recently discovered a single-celled soil fungus that secretes a protein toxin that specifically kills C. auris. Here we propose to develop a pipeline that identifies the toxin-encoding gene towards its use as a treatment. The same pipeline could yield other toxins that kill multi-drug resistant emerging pathogens.

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NanoCoUPLe: Nanopore Coupling with Unfoldase and Protease for Protein Sequencing at the single-molecule Level
Dr. C. (Chunzhe) Lu (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)
Similar to next-generation DNA sequencing, single-molecule protein sequencing promises significant breakthroughs in biology, medicine, and science. Imagine affordable, portable devices capable of detecting proteins, making early disease diagnosis more feasible. Nanopores emerge as a potential technology for such devices. Our goal is to devise a "nano-couple", consisting of a molecular machine that unfolds proteins and a nanopore responsible for reading amino acids. This innovation will boost the efficiency of nanopore protein sequencing and help further understand the sequencing mechanism. The impact is profound, potentially revolutionizing healthcare and advancing our understanding of proteins.

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An optogenetic “traffic light” for synchronizing cell populations
Dr. A. (Andreas) Milias-Argeitis (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)
The cell division cycle is a fundamental feature of living organisms. To efficiently study this complex biochemical process in large cell populations, we need to force cells to divide in a synchronous manner. However, our current synchronization protocols have severe drawbacks that limit their applicability and the degree of synchrony that can be achieved. We will develop a new, generally applicable cell synchronization method that overcomes these challenges using genetically encoded light-sensitive proteins. Synchronization of cells using light stimulation has not been tried before, and holds the potential to revolutionize cell cycle studies across many different cell types and organisms

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