Descripción del proyecto
Descubrimiento de nuevos biotensioactivos de origen marino
Los tensioactivos y los emulgentes son productos químicos fundamentales utilizados en diversas industrias. Sin embargo, su uso generalizado plantea un importante problema medioambiental. En la actualidad, el mercado depende sobremanera de alternativas sintéticas no biodegradables derivadas del petróleo o de productos vegetales genomodificados, que suscitan preocupación entre los consumidores. En este contexto, el equipo del proyecto MARISURF, financiado con fondos europeos, aprovechará el potencial sin aprovechar de las bacterias marinas. El objetivo del proyecto, dirigido por un consorcio de instituciones científicas, empresas industriales y usuarios finales, es descubrir y producir biotensioactivos a partir de una colección diversa de más de quinientas cepas bacterianas de aguas costeras y de mar abierto de todo el mundo. En conjunto, el proyecto promete agilizar el desarrollo de productos finales más viables económicamente y respetuosos con el medio ambiente.
Objetivo
Surfactants and emulsifiers constitute an important class of chemical agents that are widely used in almost every sector of modern industry. The huge market demand is currently met almost exclusively by synthetic, mainly petroleum-based, chemical products, which are usually non-biodegradable and mostly toxic or GM plant based products (used in foods), which are undesirable by some end-users. Their biologically produced counterparts (i.e. bio-surfactants and bio-emulsifiers) offer more green sustainable alternatives. This has led to a number of manufactures, looking for ways to increase competitiveness through searching for underexploited sources such as the marine environment. Our objectives are to develop (1) innovative approaches in discovering, characterizing and producing novel marine-derived bio-surfactants from a large bacterial collection (greater than 500 strains) housed at Heriot Watt University, originally isolated from various coastal and open ocean waters around the world, (2) novel, economic, and eco-friendly end-products with commercial applications in order to replace synthetic counterparts, and (3) to demonstrate the functionality of new product development for commercial exploitation. Our collection consists of novel bacterial species, originally isolated for their ability to degrade oils, with proven promise in this respect. For this reason, our consortium (consisting of academic institutions, industrial companies and end-users) offering a wide range of expertise, will address the technical bottlenecks for meeting our objectives, namely those of marine resource identification, sustainable supply, discovery pipeline and efficient production in biological systems. The relevance of our proposal to the work programme is underlined by its expected impact in increasing efficiency of discovery pipelines, the development of more economic and eco-friendly end-products and finally in contributing to the implementation of the objectives of the EU Blue Growth.
Ámbito científico
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencespublic health
- medical and health sciencesmedical biotechnologygenetic engineering
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuelsfossil energypetroleum
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringtextiles
- engineering and technologyindustrial biotechnologybioprocessing technologiesfermentation
Programa(s)
Convocatoria de propuestas
Consulte otros proyectos de esta convocatoriaConvocatoria de subcontratación
H2020-BG-2014-2
Régimen de financiación
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinador
EH14 4AS Edinburgh
Reino Unido