Description du projet
Utiliser les microbiomes marins de manière sûre et durable
Les microbiomes marins, qui représentent environ 90 % de la biomasse marine vivante, sont pour la plupart impossibles à cultiver. Ils constituent donc une source inexplorée de multiples matériaux et composés susceptibles de se révéler très utiles dans de nombreux secteurs. Malheureusement, les outils et méthodes conventionnels pour étudier et cultiver les microbiomes marins ne sont pas sans risques, qu’il s’agisse de dommages écologiques ou de problèmes éthiques. Le projet BLUETOOLS, financé par l’UE, propose une solution. En combinant différents domaines, il développera plusieurs méthodologies et outils innovants qui permettront une utilisation efficace, sûre et durable des microbiomes marins pour améliorer de nombreux aspects de notre vie quotidienne, de la nutrition à l’agriculture, en passant par la santé et la protection de l’environnement.
Objectif
Marine microbiomes represent 90% of the total living marine biomass but only a small fraction of them can be cultivated. For this reason, they are an underexplored source of bioactive compounds, carbohydrate polymers and proteins, among others. Sampling the marine biodiversity, screening, identifying and isolating the relevant microbes is cumbersome, expensive and results in a heavy environmental burden, low yields, high costs and long times to market. Therefore, new approaches are necessary to overcome the limitations for the study of marine microbial communities and their “econological use”. BLUETOOLS will unravel the potential of marine microbiomes for healthier oceans and the Blue Bioeconomy through integration of different fields to develop cutting-edge tools that support fast, efficient AND sustainable exploration and exploitation of microbiomes, avoiding the drawbacks of conventional biodiscovery practices.
The expected results of BLUETOOLS include discovering several hundreds of enzymes, rhodopsins, resistance genes, antimicrobials and anti-microfouling agents, thanks to a hybrid workflow of in silico and microfluidics-based functional discovery, resulting in the commercialization ≥400 enzymes for biocatalysis and ≥2 new solutions for plastic/polymer degradation, increasing the revenue of our industrial partners by 10-15%.
BLUETOOLS assembles 5 leading European companies, 8 academic teams and 1 private RTO that have pioneered approaches in functional metagenomics, microfluidics, microbial ecology and synthetic biology. The presence of diverse, complementary industrial stakeholders in the consortium (from pharma to materials science to sustainability) at different stages in the research-to-market process (from RTOs to SMEs to large end-users) provides a unique opportunity for broad value creation. The planned activities will span 48 months and the project is estimated at ca. 9 M€, with 60% of the total dedicated to creating highly-qualified jobs
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HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation ActionsCoordinateur
28049 Madrid
Espagne