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量的90%，但只有一小部分可以培养。出于这个原因，它们是生物活性化合物、碳水化合物聚合物和蛋白质等的未充分开发的来源。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，并造成沉重的环境负担、产量低、成本高和上市时间长。因此，有必要采用新的方法来克服海洋微生物群落研究及其“生态学应用”的局限性。BLUETOOLS将通过整合不同领域开发尖端工具，支持快速，高效和可持续的微生物探索和开发，以解决传统生物发现实践的缺点，揭示海洋微生物的潜力，为更健康的海洋和蓝色生物经济提供支持。BLUETOOLS的预期成果包括发现数百种酶，视紫红质，抗性基因，抗菌剂和抗微生物污染剂，得益于基于计算机和微流控技术的功能发现的混合工作流程，我们的产品商业化了=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，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，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开创了先河。在从研究到市场的过程的不同阶段（从研究与技术组织到中小企业再到大型终端用户），联盟中存在着各种互补的工业利益相关者（从制药到材料科学再到可持续性），这为广泛的价值创造提供了独特的机会。计划的活动将跨越48个月，该项目估计在约。900万欧元，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