FROM NEXT GENERATION SEQUENCING MICROORGANISMS TOWARDS ECOFRIENDLY BIOTECH BASED PRODUCTS

Biotechnology develops and applies microorganisms for the production of bioproducts with industrial interest.

Next-generation-sequencing (NGS) plays an increasingly important role in improving and accelerating microbial strain development for existing and novel bioproducts via screening, gene and pathway discovery, metabolic engineering and additional optimization and understanding of large-scale manufacturing.

NGS technologies have become main stream due to an important reduction in costs and an increase in sequence quality.

However, data analysis still requires substantial bioinformatics expertise and adaptation to specific purposes due to the large datasets, data management and infrastructure supporting an NGS research facility.

These challenges are particularly relevant in the research centers of the widening countries such as the case of the Centre of Biotechnology of Sfax (CBS) in Tunisia.

In line with EU orientations and twinning requirements, NGS-4-ECOPROD aims to: (i) improve creativity, excellence capacity, and resources, (ii) raise the reputation, research profile, and attractiveness, and (iii) strength research management capacities and administrative skills in the CBS, through addressing the existing gaps in the field of NGS.

NGS-4-ECOPROD project will allow CBS to exploit its NGS platform to develop original biotechnology products (extremozymes, sporeless biopesticides, antioxidant-ergothioneine, and bioplastics) useful as eco-friendly alternative to chemicals ones.

This will be achieved thanks to the tight collaboration and networking activities (staff exchanges, workshops, conferences, training young researchers, and summer school activities) between the CBS and two leading well renowned research EU Partners in the field of NGS namely the University Claude Bernard Lyon 1 in France and the Georg August University of Göttingen in Germany.

The NGS-4-ECOPROD will ultimately adopt an integrated communication and dissemination strategy with openness on the socio-economic sectors.