Overview
Funding source: EU-H2020
Start date: 2016-06-01
End date: 2020-05-31
Total funding amount: € 8 808 363
NTNU Partners
Rahmi Lale – Project manager
Che Fai Alex Wong – Ph.D. candidate – Department of Biotechnology
Swapnil Vilas Bhujbal – Postdoctoral researcher – Department of Biotechnology
Bjørn Torger Stokke – Department of Physics
Marit Sletmoen – Department of Biotechnology
Participants
- QIAGEN AARHUS AS – Denmark
- BIOILIBERIS RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SL – Spain
- DROP-TECH LTD – United Kingdom
- PROZOMIX LIMITED – United Kingdom
- THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE – United Kingdom
- NOVOZYMES A/S – Denmark
- INSTITUT NATIONAL DES SCIENCES APPLIQUEES DE TOULOUSE INSAT – France
- CENTRO DE NEUROCIENCIAS E BIOLOGIACELULAR ASSOCIACAO – Portugal
- UNIVERSIDAD DE ALICANTE – Spain
- AGENCIA ESTATAL CONSEJO SUPERIOR DEINVESTIGACIONES CIENTIFICAS – Spain
- STIFTELSEN SINTEF – Norway
Project description
Metagenomes comprise enormous reservoirs coding for proteins with useful activities. Unfortunately, harvesting this reservoir is difficult, because useful candidates are rare and hidden in an overwhelming majority of irrelevant genes. Screening campaigns of metagenomic libraries thus require massive capital-expenditure for robotic systems and much manpower, making them expensive, slow and available to very few users. To enable valorisation of the potential of the metagenome, this project assembles an interdisciplinary and intersectoral consortium that will integrate a range of technologies into a platform designed to beat the odds of identifying library hits faster, more efficiently and by a wider user base. Exploration and exploitation of the metagenome will be made faster and more successful by (i) ultrahigh-throughput screening in picoliter droplets that dramatically lowers the cost per assay to well below 0.01 cents and allows throughput of 10e7 assays per hour; (ii) workflows that streamline and increase the yield of library construction and functional expression and (iii) workflows for efficient bioinformatic analysis of hits based on user-friendly software solutions for metagenome analysis. Emphasis is put on technologies that are straightforwardly implemented in non-specialist labs, maximising the impact of METAFLUIDICS. This platform will be used to identify enzymes for biosynthesis of therapeutic small molecules, for green bioenergy conversion, bioremediation, food chemistry and other industrial applications.