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

海洋微生物占海洋生物总生物量的90%，但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繁琐、昂贵的，并导致沉重的环境负担、低产量、高成本和长时间上市。因此，有必要采用新的方法来克服海洋微生物群落及其“生态用途”研究的局限性。BLUETOOLS将通过整合不同领域来开发支持快速、高效和可持续的微生物勘探和开发的尖端工具，从而揭示海洋微生物对更健康海洋和蓝色生物经济的潜力，从而避免传统生物发现实践的缺陷。BLUETOOLS的预期结果包括发现数百种酶、视紫红质、抗性基因、抗微生物和防微污染剂，这要归功于基于硅和微流体的混合功能发现工作流程，从而产生了=400种用于生物催化的酶和=2=2个用于塑料/聚合物降解的新解决方案，使我们的工业合作伙伴的收入增加了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，他们在功能元基因组学、微流体学、微生物生态学和合成生物学方面具有领先的方法。在研究到市场过程的不同阶段(从RTO到中小企业再到大型终端用户)，财团中不同的、互补的行业利益攸关方(从制药到材料科学再到可持续发展)的存在，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，该项目估计耗资约900万欧元，其中60%致力于创造高质量的工作岗位

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