Interview For Pierre Erwes,
Biomarine 2012, Think Tank
Q1: PE to both of you:
In a few words could you tell us who you are?
Johanna: I am a project
manager for European research projects focussing on marine environmental,
genomic and biotechnological issues. My background is in bioremediation and
marine microbiology.
Meredith: I run a
biosciences innovation consultancy that specialises in challenging new areas,
of which blue biotech and industrial biotech are two. My background is in the
pharmaceutical industry, veterinary medicine, IP management and general
technology consultancy.
Q2: PE to Johanna.
For our audience could you explain the scope of marine genomics in our
biomarine industry?
With Marine Genomics we
can mine data, not resources. This is important, as strong points for using
marine resources are the high bio- and chemical diversity in the sea, many
bio-active substances are in use in the fight for survival. However, it is hard
to get sufficient quantities of the resources, it’s expensive to extract them, and
the harvest of commercially useful
amounts is neither sustainable nor guaranteed over time.
Marine genomics can help
us with the following issues:
- Better understanding of marine ecosystems,
enhanced through in-depth knowledge of the molecular repertoire of marine
organisms.
- Insights into the large number of genes
with unknown functions and possibilities to use this potential for us.
- Utilisation of novel variations of known
enzymes with improved characteristics (cold- heat-pressure stability,
inert to saline environment, e.g. in the EU-funded Mamba project).
- Determining optimum expression conditions
(examples could be nitrogen limitation or light stimulation) to avoid
costly high-throughput screening.
Marine environmental genomic
information thus can also enable better cultivation of interesting
microorganisms to learn more about their exotic enzymes which then could be
heterologously expressed in the known microbial workhorses, or if we are ambitious
and patient enough, in new model marine microorganisms.
Q3: PE to Meredith:
BioBridge is a relay between research and industry. How do you see marine
genomics applied research in major developments of tomorrow’s biomarine
industry?
Johanna has highlighted the main
attractions; the key is to marry together some interesting industrial needs
with the possibilities we have. Needs we know about include new enzymes for
green applications – biocatalysis, avoidance of petroleum-dependency, reduced
energy and carbon use; new therapeutic agents for difficult diseases (not just
cancers); and robust and novel materials, some of which may even be capable of
taking their place in nanotechnology and new data-processing methods, as well
as for industrial and medical uses. Exploring Blue Biotech also gives scope for
innovation in the important support areas of laboratory-based analytical
technologies, micro-engineering and microfluidics, extreme-environment
engineering and new bioprocess systems.
In all of these, marine genomics
plays a role – in identifying the targets, in collaborating with modern genetic
engineering and synthetic biology, in ensuring that engineering innovation is
appropriate, in addition to stimulating the search to pin down what previously
unknown genes may actually do.
Q4: PE to Meredith.
Most of the projects in marine genomics are conducted by innovative SMEs,
unfortunately after a few years they tend to disappear. What is the blocking
factor to their development and what are the winning strategies for SMEs in
Europe versus North America.
The blocking factor in Europe is
usually insufficient funding for the pre-profit trajectory of a company. Those
that focus on using marine genomics as a service or contract research tool may
indeed survive because of this, since they can achieve cash-flow if they are
effective as deliverers of what industry wants. I generally take it as a ‘rule
of thumb’ that the US has at least 10 times as much money available for
investment in start-ups and is several times more willing to invest in
innovation than is the case in Europe. Also, there is a strong support in USA
for government-funded SME links with innovative research, to embed new science
in companies. National and EU funding in blue biotech has been poorly
correlated and aligned in the past; SMEs often found it hard to be involved in
and benefit from EU consortia, for example. This is hopefully changing.
Q5: PE to Johanna.
MG4U is a European program dedicated to marine genomics. Could you tell us what
are the main points of interests and what is at stake?
MG4U is “Marine Genomics
for Users” in full. Our remit is to spread knowledge on the manifold outcomes
of national and international research projects on marine -omics, from the FP6
Network of Excellence MGE to new large projects like the French Oceanomics and
the European Micro B3. We are addressing marine researchers, policy makers and
especially industry, potentially interested in the many innovative developments
for diverse sectors. Tools within MG4U are a knowledge database, workshops and
training courses, dedicated MG sessions at conferences and
establishing/furthering one-to-one contacts between academia and industries.
Q6: PE to Johanna: when it comes to the necessary
tools used in marine genomics Bioinformatics is always top of the list. Could
you explain the concept?
In -omics you have to
deal with increasingly large amounts of sequence data, esp. since the
high-throughput and next-generation sequencing technologies have taken over and
data are “exploding”. Thus novel bioinformatics techniques and infrastructures are
urgently needed to turn data into sensible information and into knowledge. This
ranges from data- and quality management (cleaning), aligning, annotating the
raw data; to data-mining, text-mining, data integration, statistics and
modelling tasks. To make ultimate sense and predict, e. g. novel functions of
genes, genomic data need to be merged with environmental, biological and
biochemical knowledge. This has led to a new discipline called environmental bioinformatics,
which will be addressed in the Micro B3 project. Starting out as a set of techniques
bioinformatics has become a technology and a new research discipline. Also
companies are emerging to provide bioinformatics services.
Q7: PE to Meredith
& Johanna: In October in London both of you will be involved in one of the
Biomarine Think-tanks on marine biotechnology. What do you expect from such a
brainstorming?
We are working together to encourage
industry to propose strategic needs where a better understanding of genes and
their functions is going to make a difference. One outcome should be enhanced understanding
between industry and academia of marine-genomic based processes of interest leading
to industrial bio-products. Also, part of the function of a think-tank like
this is to create new contacts and networks, with a view for future activities.
So, questions to answer are
what are topics/areas/
approaches for industry-academia cooperation for marine biotechnology, and
how can typical problems i.e.
those between industry and researchers or those facing industry in establishing new developments be solved or
avoided?
We also see that big industry
understands and uses genomics in many ways already, so we want to investigate
not only
what the overall research
needs of industry are but also
how SMEs can be enabled to use
the marine bioresources potential, and
what kind of research
collaboration they are open for, and what they would pay for?
We need to define the exact area in
this value chain, where academia can hand over research results to industry. At
the moment it seems too often that industry wants things ‘on a plate’ - which
is far too far along the chain, and too expensive, for most research innovators
to achieve, even with government funding support for collaborations.
Finally, we will use the think-tank
to set some of the agenda items and identify some of the contributors for the
BioMarine 2013 conference.
Q8: PE to Johanna: You are familiar with European
project funding processes. Do you know if marine genomics is still a priority
for the European Commission? Could you elaborate?
In the
final stages of FP7 marine biotechnology and environmental genomics can be
found as part of many medium and large projects, in the Ocean of Tomorrow
calls, as well as in dedicated KBBE and a few environmental calls. In basic
research funding the ERC (European Research Council) grants often include -omics
elements as they are an integral part of many marine, environmental and life
sciences research questions.
As to the
future within Horizon 2020, not too much detail has been put down yet. The ERC
grants will continue, with the new team “Synergy” grants potentially enabling
even larger ‑omics projects to be tackled. Marine and maritime research will be
a part of the KBBE societal challenge sub-programme, thus applied projects will
become stronger. Finally biotechnology is named as one of the Key Enabling Technologies,
with marine input as a potentially very innovative element in technology
development, as we tackle very diverse taxa from which are emerging new model
species and novel knowledge, e.g. on evolution for certain biotech
applications.
So there
are three major opportunities for marine -omics to be funded, from creating new
knowledge, to addressing societal challenges, all the way to biotech
demonstration plan(t)s.
