Objective
"Fifteen percent of the world’s soil carbon stock is currently kept frozen in permafrost soils from the arctic region.
Recent climatic projections have indicated that this environment is particularly at risk due to global warming, with up to 90% of the near surface that could be thawed by 2100. Related revival in microbial activities could initiate the most dangerous amplifying feedback in the entire carbon cycle, boosting global warming as a result of a massive release in greenhouse gas. Permafrost also represent a potentially massive repository of viruses, genes and naked DNA fragments, that sometimes have been preserved in situ for up to hundreds of thousands years.
While representing a fantastic potential for innovative biotechnological applications, this genetic reservoir could turn as a major threat to human health as once thawed, vast amounts of new antibiotic-resistant determinants might be made available for horizontal gene transfer, promoting the emergence of new resistant pathogens worldwide. The potential extent of greenhouse gas production and bacterial outbreaks will ultimately depend of the metabolic, cellular and molecular complexity present in permafrost.
Here, we propose to characterize the permafrost microbial and viral communities, as well as the extent of the antibiotic resistome, using massively parallel next-generation sequencing. In addition, ancient DNA technologies will be used in order to track back permafrost response to previous episodes of global warming, which will serve as a proxy for the ongoing global warming.
This project will reveal the true balance between sources and sinks of greenhouse gas in permafrost. Potential future escape routes to current therapeutic agents will be identified through the characterization of new allelic variants in major antibiotic resistance genes; hence, this project will improve our ability to predict and fight the future effects of global warming and related emergence of new infection types."
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- medical and health sciences medical biotechnology genetic engineering gene therapy
- natural sciences biological sciences microbiology virology
- natural sciences biological sciences genetics DNA
- engineering and technology environmental engineering energy and fuels fossil energy natural gas
- medical and health sciences basic medicine pharmacology and pharmacy drug resistance antibiotic resistance
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IEF
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Coordinator
1165 KOBENHAVN
Denmark
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.