The main objective of YPACK is the pre-industrial scale up and validation of two innovative food packaging solutions (thermoformed tray and flow pack bag) based on PHA, with active and passive barrier properties. New packaging will use food industry by-products (cheese whey and almond shells), assure the biodegradability and recyclability, and reduce food waste, in the frame of the EU Circular Economy strategy.

A group of New Plant Breeding Techniques (NPBT) has opened unprecedented opportunities in agriculture. Those NPBTs are at least as efficient and often more precise than previous traditional and GM techniques, while circumventing the introduction of heritable transgenes from distant species in the plant genome. Properly communicated, NPBTs are expected to gain wide acceptance, especially when applied to breeding objectives which are seen as beneficial for the society.

The EN-ACTI2NG program (European Network on Anti-Cancer Immuno-Therapy Improvement by modification of CAR and TCR Interactions and Nanoscale Geometry) emanates from the recent clinical evidence that T cells expressing engineered tumor-specific immune receptors can eradicate certain tumors that do not respond to conventional treatment. To obtain T cells with reactivity to a wider array of tumors and to improve efficiency and on- and off-target toxicity are current challenges Therefore the EN-ACTI2NG program aims

Peritoneal dialysis (PD) is an underused life saving renal replacement therapy for end-stage kidney disease. Nevertheless, PD patients remain at high risk for poor outcome, most notably excessive risk of cardiovascular disease. There is an unmet need for a risk-adjusted individualized PD approach. The IMPROVE-PD consortium provides 15 Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) in 11 partner institutes located in 7 different countries a state-of-the-art, multidisciplinary and intersectoral pan- European training programme including input from academic, clinical and industrial stakeholders.

Environmental microbial surveys have revealed a remarkable diversity of microeukaryotic life in most ecosystems, the majority of which had previously escaped detection. From an ecological point of view this work highlighted our ignorance of critical microbial players in natural environmental processes, including primary production, biogeochemical cycling and trophic interactions such as parasitism and grazing. Consequently, our understanding of community function is partial, limiting our ability to study environmental change.

A fundamental feature of the developing neural circuits is their ability to change in response to sensorial experience. This phenomenon has been particularly observed during the generation of cortical maps, where altering the pattern of sensory experience changes the spatial organization of sensory representations. The mechanisms underlying this form of plasticity include synaptic modification such as long-term potentiation and long-term depression, classically referred to as Hebbian-based rules.

Investigador: JOSE LUIS GÓMEZ SKARMETA
Centro: CENTRO ANDALUZ DE BIOLOGIA DEL DESARROLLO

Geologic evidence indicative of flowing and ponding liquid water on the surface of ancient Mars appears abundantly across most of the Martian landscape, indicating that liquid water was present in variable amounts and for long periods of time on and/or near the surface at different moments of Mars’ early history, the Noachian era. Early Mars appears to have been “wet”. However, the presence of liquid water on the surface of early Mars is difficult to reconcile with the reduced solar luminosity at 3.8 Ga.

Recent reports suggest that early microbial colonization has an important role for in promoting health. This may contribute to reduce the risk of chronic diseases such as obesity, allergies and inflammatory conditions. Advances in understanding host-microbe interactions imply that maternal microbiota plays a crucial role on health programming. This process begins in utero and it is modulated by mode of delivery and diet.

The global folding of the chromosome is mediated by Structural Maintenance of Chromosome (SMC) proteins, which stabilize the higher-order chromatin architecture by bringing distant DNA sequences together. Despite over a decade of work on these systems, their mechanism remains unknown, largely because of difficulty in re-capitulating physiological DNA binding and condensation in vitro. Moreover, traditional biochemical approaches are poorly suited for the study of processes that are fundamentally mechanical in nature.