Targeting aquatic extremophiles for sourcing novel enzymes, drugs, metabolites and chemicals 

Extreme environments with huge bio-resources still present enormous challenges for exploration and sampling operations. Challenges are often due to the depth, pH, salinity, temperature and pressure conditions, which make exploration technically difficult, risky and expensive.

Proposals under this topic should explore marine or other aquatic ecosystems with complex and extreme conditions such as temperature, pressure, alkalinity or acidity/pH level, extremely low nutrients, etc. with focus on extremophilic organisms capable of thriving/surviving in such extreme environments (e.g. deep hydrothermal vents, hypersaline lagoons, sub-seafloor sediments). They should develop or optimise tailor-made sampling methods, explore the metabolic, physiological and other adaptation mechanisms to such extreme ecological conditions and look for novel and highly efficient metabolites, drugs, enzymes and chemicals for industrial application.

They should disseminate their results in the most efficient and transparent manner considering the risks and ethics related to science & technology in compliance with EU regulations on access to genetic resources and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from their utilisation (ABS) in the EU.

Selected projects should collaborate with each other.

In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.