WORPACKAGES
WP 1
Project Management.
WP 2
Sourcing of Seaweeds and Sponges
The starting point of COMBO will be the samples already present in local marine biomaterial repositories organised by partners UG UCT and CNRS located in both sides of the Atlantic Ocean: Ireland, South Africa and French Guiana. Additional samples of seaweeds and sponges collected in Ireland, France and South Africa will be provided for cultivations
WP 3
(Co)Cultures of host cells and their symbionts.
Here we will use all the knowledge acquired by the partners HM and UG in the culture of seaweeds in laboratory conditions to culture Laurencia spp. and Dictyota spp.
The cell culture medium optimised for G. barretti will serve as starting point for the establishment of sponge species-specific cell culture media for the COMBO target species
WP 4
Omics and metabolic pathways
Untargeted metabolomic data will first be obtained by UG and FM using well developed protocols for both the holobiont and microbial cultures respectively.
Computational pipelines developed at WU, including antiSMASH and BiG-SCAPE, will be used to chart the diversity of biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) in sponge and seaweed microbiota across diverse species, cell types and cell cultures obtained in WP2 in the first year then in the following years for the cell cultures obtained in WP3 and WP5.
WP 6
Marine Biodiscovery
Several steps will be performed in this WP to complete the biodiscovery pipeline, and identify hits for diverse cosmetic and therapeutical applications. Both partners UG and FM have a long experience in the isolation and structure elucidation of marine natural products (MNP).
Then, partners UA, FM and USC will assess the anti-inflammatory, antitumoral and antimicrobial potential of all compounds identified and purified in COMBO belonging to the 4 families of targeted MNP
WP 8
Dissemination Communication and Exploitation
WP 5
Chassis cells for marine metabolites.
Genome engineering tools for 1-2 marine bacteria and 1-2 marine yeasts will be developed. The tools will be founded on CRISPR- and recombineering-based approaches, and genome engineering efficiencies will be assessed via sequencing (both on-target amplicon- and whole-genome off-target sequencing analyses), as well as phenotypic screens (e.g. reporter gene expression, and conditional traits), as already established for other microbes by partners DTU and FM
WP 7
Life Cycle Assessment
This WP will engage life cycle assessment (LCA) expertise to provide a first screening of the environmental performance, impact hotspots, and improvement options for these novel culturing and downstream processes – providing new evidence on their potential sustainability compared with conventional chemical synthesis
