Professor Sandra Tenreiro, head of the Degeneration and Ageing Lab at NOVA Medical School, has been awarded a prestigious research grant from the Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP). The international award supports innovative, interdisciplinary research in the life sciences and the funded project aims to clarify how DNA organizes inside cell nuclei and how malfunctions in this organization can have pathological implications.
The study, titled “Dancing genomes – mapping chromatin’s material properties with retinal development & disease” and coordinated by Michael Robson from the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (Berlin, Germany), brings together a cross-disciplinary team of experts, including Sandra Tenreiro (NOVA Medical School, Portugal), Anders Hansen (MIT, USA), and Davide Michieletto (University of Edinburgh, UK).
The project aims to uncover how the physical properties of chromatin - the structure that organizes DNA - impact its biological functions. Chromatin’s ability to bend, shift, and rearrange is essential for gene regulation and DNA repair, yet its behavior as a liquid, solid, or gel remains poorly understood. This is because observing chromatin’s movements in living cells, and across the various size scales it operates on, has been extremely difficult.
To adress this challenge, the team will leverage a natural phenomenon observed in the rod cells – a type of photoreceptor cell in the retina, the part of the eye responsible for vision - of nocturnal mammals like mice, where chromatin organization is inverted to optimize vision in low light. This rare cellular feature provides a unique model to observe chromatin’s movements and physical properties in real time. The researchers will use genetic tools, high-resolution imaging, and computational modeling to analyze chromatin dynamics in both mouse retinal cells and human retinal organoids, with potential implications for diseases like macular degeneration.
“We are honored to have received this prestigious award from HFSP, which supports innovative and high-impact research in the life sciences,” said Sandra Tenreiro. “This is the first collaboration between our four labs, and for our team at NOVA Medical School, it represents an exciting opportunity to explore a compelling scientific question alongside world-leading researchers”, added the researcher.
Looking forward, the NOVA Medical School team hopes this recognition will open new doors for collaboration and deepen understanding of how our genomes work, with possible ramifications for retinal development and diseases.