Given the current state-of-the-art, the advances at the end of EMBRIC will be:
• Functional trans-disciplinary and strong collaboration between related RIs: EMBRC, the main RI for the provision of marine bioresources, AQUAEXCEL specialised on finfish, and the more generic RIs in biological, chemical and social sciences MIRRI, EU-OS, ELIXIR and RISIS.
• WP2 provided important new developments that will facilitate user access to information on biological resources which will facilitate efficient exploitation of biodiversity for biotechnology.
• WP3 collaborated with EMBRIC case studies (WP6, WP7) and TNA user projects hosted generated scientific results and feedback for improvement of discovery workflows.
• WP4 has helped to connect the marine biotechnology community to biomolecular data resources, providing a foundation for innovation and impact in the domain.
• WP5 developed a territorial embedding assessment approach, who has triggered a strong interest both from research institutes and from regional authorities that have included marine biotechnologies in their smart specialization strategy. The study of TT practices has also been subjected to a high international exposure (article submitted to peer review journal).
• WP6 has resulted in a flexible system to access cross research Infrastructure expertise and facilities to meet specific user defined demand of the research community.
• WP7 processed more than double of the 30 microalgal samples originally planned for the project, selecting species with very different properties. Specific software for network analysis is being used to reveal differences and similarities in the compound content of different samples, in order to pinpoint conditions in which novel compounds appear.
• WP8 developed a non-invasive protocol based on water sampling, promising to be an important new tool for the development of hatchery-based selective breeding programs. The results revealed a distinct genetic break between the Shetland Islands and southern Norway across a distance of just 300 km. Moreover, the use of genomic information was shown to increase the predictive ability of the genetic models used to estimate breeding values.
• WP9 developed knowledge management activities and tools for staff and users by. The foundation and baseline analysis were achieved and supporting framework was expanded to assist in the organization of training initiatives from participating RIs. The knowledge gained within the EMBRIC project has helped WP9 coordination office in better positioning their offer and skills in this field for future trainings.
• WP10 was dedicated to the set-up of a TNA program, allowing the external scientific user community to access EMBRIC research workflows. EMBRIC TNA has demonstrated that collaboration among different RIs can help Users in their development of basic ideas towards marketable products. We have gained confidence that we –as consortia of collaborating RIs– can address the research and technological development needs not only of academia but also of the private sector.
