ERC Starting grant to Claudia Fasolato for the project “CHIROLE”

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ISC researcher Claudia Fasolato was awarded with the prestigious ERC Starting grant from the European Community. The CHIROLE project aims at exploring “the quantum role of chirality in biology by all optical experiments”. It will last 5 years with a 1.5 M€ funding.

Chirality is the lack of mirror symmetry, and it is a widespread property in biological systems, from atomic arrangements in molecules (e.g. the helical structure of DNA) to macroscopic structures (e.g. the shape of seashells). Fascinatingly, a quantum behavior associated to molecular chirality has been recently established: experiments proved that the electron transport through chiral molecules is spin selective. Thus, the mobility of electrons with a specific spin orientation relative to the chiral axis of the molecule is favored. The phenomenon is known as chiral induced spin selectivity (CISS). When the electron distribution of a chiral molecule reorganizes, for example as an effect of intermolecular interactions, the CISS effect gives rise to transient spin polarizations in those molecules, making them capable of behaving like magnetic systems.

CHIROLE aims at unraveling the implications and microscopic features of these CISS-induced, transient spin effects in chiral biomolecules. The aim is to determine if – and to what extent – CISS is capable to route biological interactions. The CHIROLE team will implement advanced optical spectroscopy experiments, using pump-probe methods and exploiting magneto-plasmonic nanobiosensors, to assess the role of CISS in intermolecular interactions involving DNA. By linking quantum physics with the biological functions, CHIROLE is an intrinsically interdisciplinary project and holds the promise of advancing our understanding of the role of chirality in a quantum biology frame.

The Optical Spectroscopy on NanoBiosystems group led by Claudia Fasolato is looking for 2 PhD students and 2 post-docs to work on this new project. For more information, contact: claudia.fasolato@cnr.it

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded 494 Starting Grants to young scientists and scholars across Europe. The funding – totalling nearly €780 million – supports cutting-edge research in a wide range of fields, from life sciences and physics to social sciences and humanities. Three CNR projects were funded out of the 41 Italian grants across all disciplines. For more information, visit:  https://erc.europa.eu

The statistics on the ERC Starting grant 2024 call is available here: https://erc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/2024-09/erc-2024-stg-statistics.pdf