José Bessa awarded ERC Starting Grant

José Bessa is one of the Portuguese scientists recipients of ERC (European Research Council) funding. The researcher is being awarded around 1.5ME to fully devote his work for the next five years to understanding pancreas development and functioning, as well as pancreas-related conditions, diabetes in particular.

The i3S researcher aims to understand pancreas's reguloma, in other words, the groups of areas in the genoma that regulate the development and functioning of the organ. During the differentiation stage in any organ, it is known, some gene sets are expressed, whereas others are silenced, and this expression is crucial for a correct development and functioning. Switching genes "on" and "off" in the right time and place depends on the regulatory areas scattered across the genome of every life form. Several diseases stem from errors that occur in these regulatory areas or in the corresponding regulators. One of such diseases is diabetes, which José Bessa's team has been targeting for some time. "We hope to unravel the DNA code without genes and understand how subtile changes might help increase the risk to fall prey to some diseases, diabetes in particular", the researcher explains. José Bessa goes on to say that "funding with this dimension is essential to solve complex scientific issues". This ERC Grant, he adds, "will allow for the development of leading research with cutting-edge technology."