December, 2012
Innovation from the sea: Jacobs University coordinates EU project in blue biotechnology
On February 1, a new EU project to make huge amount of data from marine microorganisms available for research and biotechnological applications will be officially launched at Jacobs University with a three-day meeting. The Micro B3 project – the name stands for microbial biodiversity, bioinformatics and biotechnology – is financed by the EU with a total of € 9 million for a period of four years.
January 30, 2012
The project’s main objectives are to create an integrative database, which is open to researchers worldwide and features many innovative tools for data analysis, and to develop a legal framework for genome-based environmental research. New biotechnological applications will also be identified.
32 partner institutions from 14 countries are participating in the project, which unites leading experts from eight disciplines and is coordinated by Frank Oliver Glöckner, Professor of Bioinformatics at Jacobs University.
Modern biotechnological processes, which utilize or modify genetic information, have been in use for many years. Their main areas of usage lie within agriculture, medical or pharmaceutical applications, and the food industry. The so-called “blue biotechnology”, which uses genetic information of marine organisms for biotechnology, is still considered new terrain: Only 1% of all biotechnology companies worldwide use marine ecosystem knowledge as a source (e.g. for innovative enzymatic functions). Read more…
