WiseFood aims at developing smart digital applications that will empower citizens to make healthier and more sustainable food choices. It will leverage state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques and tools, combining the factual knowledge representation capacity of Knowledge Graphs with the natural language understanding, generation, and reasoning abilities of Large Language Models. These will allow us to build novel tools that democratize access to reliable food-related information and go beyond the current levels of personalization and contextualization offered by existing food recommenders. The developed applications will be user-friendly and integrate seamlessly into daily life, not requiring specialized IT skills or devices. Our goal is to bridge the divide between knowledge, intention, and action with end-to-end intelligent solutions. A human-in-the-loop approach with food domain experts, including nutritionists, will be applied to ensure alignment with national policies and guidelines. Living Labs implementing a multi-actor approach are foreseen to co-create the envisioned solutions. These will take place in three different countries, Ireland, Hungary, and Slovenia, with the latter being an already established and operational short food supply chain Living Lab. The outcomes of WiseFood will enhance the overall food ecosystem, by promoting healthier dietary habits, reducing the ecological footprint of food consumption, and fostering a culture of well-informed and eco-conscious citizens.

Evidence is emerging that rapid, profound and persisting changes in gene expression regulation and post-transcriptional regulation underlies the epileptogenic process. The current proposal builds on preliminary data which demonstrates that rapid reduction of a microRNA; miR-124, causes increased expression and activity of NRSF, a master-regulator of epileptogenesis. The current proposal will build on this and investigate other gene networks regulated by miR-124 in neurons, by developing the first miR-124 KO mouse using CRISPR technology and a miR-124 overexpressing mouse. These transgenic mice will then be profiled at the epigenomic level using ATAC-Seq, the transcriptome level using HITS-CLIP and ribosomal profiling and the proteomic level using mass spec. This will be the first study to examine the pleiotropic role of miR-124 in mature neurons and identify gene networks regulated by this neuronally enriched miRNA. If miR-124 disruption causes aberrant activity of epigenetic modifiers including NRSF then we will test whether miR-124 restitution can restore correct gene expression networks and prevent or modify epileptogenesis in a mouse model of the disorder. Next we will determine whether data obtained in mouse models is translatable to the human form of the condition by obtaining and maintaining resected human epileptic hippocampus live in culture. We will ectopically introduce miR-124 and test the effect of miR-124 restitution on network activity and energetics using live-calcium imaging as well as the epigenomic and transcriptomic effects. Together this proposal represents the most in-depth analysis of miRNA function and will set the standard for future functional analyses of these molecules. Furthermore it has the potential to intervene in disease process and apply findings to a relevant human model providing a novel therapeutic target for the treatment of epilepsy.