BlueTools - INNOVATIVE TOOLS FOR SUSTAINABLE EXPLORATION OF MARINE MICROBIOMINNOVATIVE TOOLS FOR SUSTAINABLE EXPLORATION OF MARINE MICROBIOMES: TOWARDS A CIRCULAR BLUE BIOECONOMY AND HEALTHIER MARINE ENVIRONMENTS

海洋微生物群占海洋生物总生物量的90%，但其中只有一小部分可以培养。因此，它们是生物活性化合物、碳水化合物聚合物和蛋白质等未被充分开发的来源。对海洋生物多样性进行采样、筛选、鉴定和分离相关微生物是一项繁琐、昂贵的工作，而且会造成沉重的环境负担、低产量、高成本和上市时间长。因此，需要新的方法来克服海洋微生物群落及其“经济利用”研究的局限性。BLUETOOLS将通过整合不同领域开发支持微生物组快速、高效和可持续探索和利用的尖端工具，揭示海洋微生物组对健康海洋和蓝色生物经济的潜力，避免传统生物发现实践的缺点。BLUETOOLS的预期结果包括发现数百种酶、视紫红质、抗性基因、抗菌剂和抗微污染剂，这得益于基于硅和微流体的混合功能发现工作流程，导致400种用于生物催化的酶和2种用于塑料/聚合物降解的新解决方案的商业化，使我们的工业合作伙伴的收入增加10-15%。BLUETOOLS汇集了5家领先的欧洲公司，8个学术团队和1个私人RTO，这些公司在功能宏基因组学，微流体学，微生物生态学和合成生物学方面具有开创性的方法。在从研究到市场过程的不同阶段（从rto到中小企业到大型最终用户），联盟中存在着不同的、互补的工业利益相关者（从制药到材料科学到可持续性），为广泛的价值创造提供了独特的机会。计划的活动将持续48个月，项目估计约为90万欧元，其中60%用于创造高质量的就业机会

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 marinebiodiversity, screening, identifying and isolating the relevant microbes is cumbersome, expensive and results in a heavy environmentalburden, low yields, high costs and long times to market. Therefore, new approaches are necessary to overcome the limitations for thestudy of marine microbial communities and their “econological use”. BLUETOOLS will unravel the potential of marine microbiomesfor 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, antimicrobialsand anti-microfouling agents, thanks to a hybrid workflow of in silico and microfluidics-based functional discovery, resulting in thecommercialization =400 enzymes for biocatalysis and =2 new solutions for plastic/polymer degradation, increasing the revenue of ourindustrial partners by 10-15%. BLUETOOLS assembles 5 leading European companies, 8 academic teams and 1 private RTO that havepioneered 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 theresearch-to-market process (from RTOs to SMEs to large end-users) provides a unique opportunity for broad value creation. The plannedactivities will span 48 months and the project is estimated at ca. 9 M€, with 60% of the total dedicated to creating highly-qualified jobs