ERC Synergy Grant for Nenad Ban

In addition to Nenad Ban's group, the following universities are involved in the program: Bernd Bukau's laboratory, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg (D) and Sander Tans' group, AMOLF Amsterdam (NL).

ERC Synergy Grants are currently the only way for Swiss-based researchers to continue participating in the EU's Horizon Europe research programme. To apply for an ERC Synergy Grant, they must join forces with European partner institutions. In a Synergy Grant project, only one of a maximum of four partners may be from a third country.

The European Research Council ERC launched the Synergy Grant in 2012. With the grant, the EU wants to promote pioneering research that is only possible through the synergy of several teams.

The programme in detail:

Most proteins function within larger complexes. How these intricate structures are correctly formed is poorly understood, yet critical to all cellular processes and pathological conditions. Recent breakthroughs suggest that multi-protein complexes form co-translationally, by super-assemblies of multiple ribosomes and other cofactors that are coordinated in time and space. This striking notion contrasts starkly with textbook models and is key to the possibilities and failures of complex formation. However, owing to technical limitations, the mechanisms and scope of actively coordinated protein assembly are poorly understood.

Elucidating how these large and transient co-translational formations produce protein complexes throughout the genome is a next-level challenge that cannot be addressed by a single discipline. We propose a unique merging of cutting-edge approaches:

• Ribosomal profiling to detect interactions between ribosomes engaged in assembly and cofactors genome-wide.
• Single-molecule force spectroscopy and super-resolution imaging to reveal ribosome movements and nascent chain assembly.
  
• Cryo-EM and tomography to elucidate the structural basis of ribosome interactions that enable direct assembly.
  The program addresses
  
• the coordination of multiple ribosomes in time and space,
  
• the folding and assembly of nascent chains, and guidance by chaperones and novel cofactors,
  
• the major protein complexes classes of homo-dimers, higher-order oligomers, hetero-dimers, and complexes formed at membranes. This ambitious program will provide insight of unprecedented detail and scope, spanning from the cellular to the atomic level, from in vivo to in vitro, from genome-wide patterns to molecular mechanisms, and from bacteria to human cells. It will impact a vast spectrum of protein complexes, reveal unknown layers of control in protein biogenesis, with implications for ribosome quality control, artificial protein design, and mechanisms of disease.
  

Link to the website of the Ban lab.