ERC Starting Grant · 2022
Deciphering stem cell immunity
Stem cells guard tissue integrity by renewing the pool of differentiated cells, and must therefore be shielded from threats such as transposable elements or viruses. In that line, stem cells can largely resist viral infections, but they do so without deploying the antiviral pathways at play in differentiated cells. So, what guards the guardians? I recently discovered a stem cell-specific immune pathway, driven by a protein termed aviD (antiviral Dicer), which mounts an antiviral RNA interference (RNAi) response and thwarts RNA virus infection. This illustrates that stem cells implement specific defence mechanisms that are poorly understood, or unknown. My proposal aims at bridging the…
From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.