Work Package 1
Novel Bio Resources and Improved Approaches to Biodiversity Mining
WP1 will involve “smart mining” of diverse marine habitats using metagenomics and metatranscriptomics based approaches to map the taxonomic and functional diversity of the marine microbiomes of microalgae, deep sea sponges and Atlantic salmon as well as profiling the environmental properties of these marine habitats and together with culturing approaches, establishing a marine microbiome repository of microbes’ microbial consortia and small molecules.
To enable sustainable sampling of new microbial diversity and functionality from marine microorganisms and aquaculture systems.
To perform multi-omics analyses to assess microbiome composition, metabolic potential and bioactivity, linking global biodiversity patterns to overall microbial and BGC diversity.
To develop ex situ cultivation systems that mimic natural marine habitats (e.g., carbon sources, microbial interactions, biofilm lifestyle) to allow a more efficient transfer and proliferation of complex, bioactive microbial assemblages under laboratory conditions.
To expand existing strain collections with new bioactive microbial isolates and microbial communities/consortia.
To establish links between biodiversity and natural product diversity.