BlueTools: INNOVATIVE TOOLS FOR SUSTAINABLE EXPLORATION OF MARINE MICROBIOMES

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取样、筛选、鉴定和分离相关微生物既麻烦又昂贵，并造成沉重的环境负担、产量低、成本高和上市时间长。因此，有必要采取新的方法来克服海洋微生物群落研究及其“生态用途”的局限性。BLUETOOLS将通过整合不同领域来开发尖端工具，以支持快速，高效和可持续的微生物勘探和开发，避免传统生物发现实践的缺点，从而揭示海洋微生物组对健康海洋和蓝色生物经济的潜力。BLUETOOLS的预期成果包括发现数百种酶、视紫红质、抗性基因、抗菌剂和抗微生物剂，这要归功于基于计算机和微流体的功能发现的混合工作流程，从而商业化了=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，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中（从RTO到中小企业再到大型最终用户）的不同阶段，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。计划的活动将持续48个月，该项目估计约为100万美元。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 marine biodiversity, screening, identifying and isolating the relevant microbes is cumbersome, expensive and results in a heavy environmental burden, low yields, high costs and long times to market. Therefore, new approaches are necessary to overcome the limitations for the study of marine microbial communities and their “econological use”. BLUETOOLS will unravel the potential of marine microbiomes for 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, antimicrobials and anti-microfouling agents, thanks to a hybrid workflow of in silico and microfluidics-based functional discovery, resulting in the commercialization =400 enzymes for biocatalysis and =2 new solutions for plastic/polymer degradation, increasing the revenue of our industrial partners by 10-15%. BLUETOOLS assembles 5 leading European companies, 8 academic teams and 1 private RTO that have pioneered 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 the research-to-market process (from RTOs to SMEs to large end-users) provides a unique opportunity for broad value creation. The planned activities will span 48 months and the project is estimated at ca. 9 M€, with 60% of the total dedicated to creating highly-qualified jobs