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Transnational R&D

EBB

European Marine Biological Resource Centre Bank

Principal Investigator
Group Leader

PhD in Biology at FCUP, Porto. Full Professor – Faculty of Sciences of Porto University and director of CIIMAR – Interdisciplinary Center of Marine and Environmental Research, Chief Strategy Officer – Agriculture – Fykia Biotech. Director of the Team of Blue Biotechnology and Health (BBE) of CIIMAR.
Main research: cyanobacteria secondary metabolites: toxins and molecules with biotechnological applications. Director of the LEGE culture collection comprising more than 2000 strains of cyanobacteria and microalgae. Published 490 papers in Biotechnology and Ecotoxicology. Coordinator of two H2020 projects: RISE and ERA Chair.
Director of the Doctoral Program in Marine Biotechnology and Aquaculture (U Porto and U Minho).

RESEARCH GROUPS:

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The coastal regions in Europe through their S3s acknowledge the potential of Marine Biological Resources (MBRs) and especially blue biotechnologies (technological applications that use marine biological systems, living organisms or derivates to make or modify products or processes for specific uses, as defined by the Convention on Biological Diversity) to generate and promote employment, economic and regional development, contributing to growth and cohesion.

MBRs are one of the main services provided by marine ecosystems. Culture collections of MBRs are key to the systematic research of interesting and unique genes, bioactives and biomaterials from the marine environment with potential for commercial development and job creation in coastal regions.

The EMBRC BioBank (EBB) will set the basis for the common operation of the distributed marine biobanking facilities of the European Marine Biological Resource Centre (EMBRC) by:

i) Setting up technological tools and common procedures for the ex-situ maintenance of MBRs along the whole phylogenetic tree of life; and:

ii) the application of best practice guidelines throughout the EBB collections to ensure compliance with regulatory framework that sets the rules on access and benefit sharing (ABS) on the use of marine bioresources for commercial and academic research.

iii) the development of innovation use cases involving industrial end users and administrations at the national and European level with competence in regulating ABS for the production of a set of best practice guidelines for ABS compliance when using MBRs for innovation purposes.

The EBB will ultimately facilitate sustainable access to Atlantic marine biodiversity, its associated data, and extractable products for local and international academia and industry users.

Leader Institution
Universidad de Vigo, Spain
Program
Interreg Atlantic Area
Funding
Other projects