The project
About Bluetools
Only a small portion of marine microbiomes, which make about 90% of all marine biomass, can be grown in a lab. Because of this they are an underutilised source of proteins, carbohydrate polymers, and other bioactive substances.
Sampling the marine biodiversity, screening, identifying, and isolating the pertinent microorganisms is time-consuming, costly, and results in low yields, high expenses, and extended time to market.
In four years, Bluetools wants to make marine microbes easier to research and use through innovative strategies.
Our goal
Bluetools will uncover the potential of marine microbiomes for healthier oceans and the Blue Bioeconomy while avoiding the drawbacks of traditional biodiscovery practices.
Bluetools Project Data
Call: Horizon-CL6-2022-CIRCBio-01
Type of Action: Horizon-RIA
Grant agreement: 101081957
Duration: 48 monts
Partners: 14
Full title: Innovative tools for sustainable exploration of marine microbiomes: Towards a circular blue bioeconomy and healthier marine environments – BlueTools
Link to CORDIS: Bluetools CORDIS
Expected results
Developing novel microbiome-based goods and processes is crucial while respecting biodiversity and ecosystems. We anticipate the following outcomes from our project:
Provide a scientific foundation
Establish a scientific foundation for the efficient generation of high-quality marine microbiome data, data interoperability, and ease of use by multiple stakeholders.
Increase the participation of all actors
Achieve a greater understanding of sustainability objectives while increasing the viability and economic prospects of marine microbiome-enabled products and processes by involving all actors in the marine microbiome biodiscovery pipeline, from industry to scientific community to civil society.
Demonstrate biodiscovery methodologies
Demonstrate biodiscovery methodologies, broadening the range of biotechnology-enabled goods and processes with societal value.
Improved protection and sustainable use of marine bioresources
The development of innovative intellectual property rights (IPRs) techniques that ensure transparent access and fair and equitable sharing of benefits derived from their use will enhance the protection and sustainable use of marine bioresources.
Raise awareness
Raise awareness of the marine microbiome's potential to support a sustainable blue bioeconomy.
How it works
Bluetools will investigate microbiomes of underexplored aquatic and marine environments. By doing that, study the anthropic impact on nature and investigate those microbes’ potential for industrial applications across the bioeconomy.
The use of cultivation-independent approaches will minimize the impact of sampling (WP2), ensuring sustainable sourcing of the starting materials. It will also address the difficulty to cultivate and customize microbiomes with current laboratory cultivation techniques.
Bluetools will develop a bioinformatic pipeline with improved efficiency in the assembly, functional annotation and mining of marine microbiomes to overcome the current limitations (WP3).
Furthermore, it will demonstrate the wide applicability of discovered marine based solutions, across a wide range of applications (WP4): pharmaceutical, cosmetic ingredients, agriculture or environmental services, which will be evaluated to maximize performance and sustainability (WP5).
Finally, an integral part of Bluetools’ concept is cooperation within expert networks to overcome fragmentation and duplication of efforts.
Who are we?
Bluetools brings together five top European companies, eight university teams, and one private registered training organisations to pioneer methodologies in functional metagenomics, microfluidics, microbial ecology, and synthetic biology.
Partners
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Sibling projects
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