Prof. Roman Jerala received ERC Advanced grant
Prof. dr. Roman Jerala received the ERC Advanced grant with a five-year project "MaCChines - Molecular machines based on coiled-coil protein origami". ERC selected 269 projects for financing out of 2167 project proposals. MaCChines is one of only 7 projects supported for funding by the Evaluation Panel for Applied Life Sciences and Non-Medical Biotechnology.
The aim of the project is to develop the principle of the preparation of artificial proteins based on modular coiled coils (CCPO) in order to determine the potentials of this approach and elucidate which three-dimensional structures can be built in this way. It is a completely new type of protein design that is modular and differs from that based on natural proteins. This approach was designed by the group of prof. Jerala. Despite the fact that these are artificial proteins, such protein cages can be obtained in cells without harmful effects, which give them great potential for medical and technological use, for the delivery of medicines, for sensors and new materials.
The acquired project is the first ERC project in Slovenia from the area of Life Sciences and the fourth ERC project for leading researchers in Slovenia.