The Visual Genetics (VISGEN) consortium brings together eight academic and five commercial scientifically leading teams to address the unique challenge of visualizing nuclear processes in intact brain in real-time. By exchanging knowledge between academic and commercial sectors in Europe, as well as undertaking training secondments at leading Universities in China the team will grow its European and global competitiveness in a world-leading forefront of neuroscience and genetic technology. Visualisation of transcription in living systems has not been witnessed directly, this multidisciplinary and international project will herald a new era where this idea becomes a regular research tool and translates to a clinical and diagnostic technology in the future. The team will use a unique biotagging platform to develop the technology that is required to interrogate transcription. The intersectoral effort requires the amalgamation of knowledge from neuroscientists, synthetic chemists, engineers, physicists, analytical chemists, nanobiologists, behavioural scientists, laser technology and image processing experts. The consortium combines expertise from thirteen organisations from seven countries to build the multidisciplinary team and share the knowledge that addresses and will overcome the task of realising real-time and spatially resolved genetic studies. Once developed, the technology can be utilized for other medical-based research and development projects aimed at early stage disease diagnosis, cancer detection, and toxicity studies. Real-time visual genetics will transform our understanding of the state-of-the-art and herald transformative changes in the field of neuroscience, and in general life science.

The renal tract (kidneys, the ureters, bladder) is a complex organ system crucial for maintaining the body homeostasis. This organ system arises from different precursor pools through a complex program of patterning, differentiation and morphogenesis in embryonic development. Alteration of this program leads to renal tract malformations (RTM) that are incompatible with a healthy life. While some of these RTM can be surgically corrected, others develop into chronic entities that may lead to renal failure; the burden for the patients and for the socio-economic impact for the health systems is immense. Although congenital RTM are amongst the most frequent human birth defects, the different programs that direct normal and pathological development have remained poorly understood. The RENALTRACT training network aims to address these deficits and provide a better understanding of the programs that underlie RTM and provide solutions to clinical problems. This shall be achieved by using a multidisciplinary team approach with partners working in complementary disciplines (developmental biology, renal physiology, Omics, clinical medicine). RENALTRACT has unique and distinguishing features by uniting studies on components of the urinary tract, by building a bridge between basic and clinician scientists and by combining state of the art methods from a number of complementary fields in a variety of animal models. RENALTRACT aims to establish a first class multidisciplinary training program for outstanding Early-Stage Researchers (ESRs) to provide a group of young scientists with expert knowledge to envision and embark on novel therapies of renal tract malformations in the future. ESRs will benefit from an excellent working environment with state-of-the-art technologies and supervision by international leaders in the field and an inter-disciplinary approach. This will be complemented by intersectoral exposure and exchange between the RENALTRACT public and private participants.

Cardiovascular (CV) disease is a main cause of death worldwide. During adulthood, ischemic heart disease leads to heart failure and perinatally, congenital heart defects are found in over 20% of deaths. Moreover, genetic or epigenetic factors altering development can have an impact much later in life. These facts underscore the need of a better understanding of the genetic and environmental factors that influence CV development. An important way to increase our knowledge is by visualizing cardiac development in vivo. Recent advance in microscopy allows monitoring CV development at a cellular level in organisms such as the zebrafish model. Particularly revolutionary has been the development of light sheet microscopy (LSM). We want to further exploit LSM for in vivo manipulation of cells in the embryonic zebrafish heart and measure with high precision biophysical parameters, by introducing novel features to LSM such as optical tweezers. High throughput cardiac imaging protocols for zebrafish larvae suitable for screenings will be set up. We will develop softwares to enhance resolution of acquisition, large dataset handling and image-processing. The aim is to generate a toolbox to be implemented into existing software packages allowing a complete modeling of zebrafish cardiac morphogenesis. We will adapt LSM for adult zebrafish hearts to study cardiac regeneration and mouse heart development at cellular resolution. Each Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) will develop their own technology to solve a biological problem at the frontier of knowledge. ESRs will receive multidisciplinary (CV development, physics, biocomputing, bioimaging) as well as intersectorial (academic research, SMEs, large companies) training and will achieve unique skills on microscopy, in-vivo imaging and image analysis allowing them to interrogate questions on cardiac development and regeneration. Their profile will be at the interface of a bioengineer and a life science researcher filling a currently existing gap on the market.

This proposal sprang from European scientists in both academia and industry who identified a common challenge: setting up a training frame to educate the next generation of imagers in complex biological systems (healthy & pathological), so they are able to master all major aspects of this competitive field and bring important innovations to universities and companies. The long-term goal of any initiative to image biological processes is reaching cellular or subcellular resolution in a complete organism. This is now possible using vertebrate embryos as models and the most recent technological advances as tools. ESRs will be trained by addressing the following scientific bottlenecks and challenges: -Preparing vertebrate embryos (rodent & zebrafish) for optimal imaging -Fine-tuning sensors, reporters and actuators to track cell types, cellular processes and behaviours in living organisms -Developing and implementing new imaging instruments -Analysing complex sets of big-data images to extract relevant information -Using processed images to design computational and mathematical models of development and pathologies -Comparing these models with experimental data and create a feedback loop improving the whole work chain from sample preparation to instrumentation and analysis. This interdisciplinary training is based on an intersectoral organisation of the consortium with partners from academia and companies that need these future experts to develop new instruments, screen drugs and chemicals in living systems and develop software to analyse and model medical images. The full training programme is based on an optimal balance between training through research and many network-wide training events, including conferences with physical presence, digital conferences and monthly videolink events. Consortium members are keen to implement both classical and original outreach activities (eg MOOCs, serious games, Lego designs) to bring state-of-the-art microscopy to the classroom.