MG4U profile

With the BioMarine Business Convention less than three weeks away, we'll be taking a closer look at the main sponsors and partners.

First up is MG4U...

The EU coordination action Marine Genomics 4 Users (MG4U) responds to several critical bottlenecks. It spreads results from recent and on-going projects in marine genomics and enhances rapid, efficient knowledge transfer to generate interdisciplinary research capacity in Europe. Cutting-edge genomic approaches are now sufficiently mature to advance the knowledge based bio-economy in the marine sector. Marine genomics has enormous potential to improve our lifestyles and prosperity, and to assist with governance and sustainable management of the marine environment.

Today, marine genomics knowledge is a vital part of “blue biotechnology”, and is leading to applications in the management of natural and cultured resources, and preserving marine environments. However, many business leaders and legislators are not yet aware of how marine genomics hold great potential for problem solving and industrial commercial advantage. Valuable knowledge is made accessible and disseminated in user-friendly contexts by Marine Genomics for Users (MG4U). We facilitate knowledge and technology transfer between high-throughput marine genomics, industry and society through dedicated sessions, workshops, face-to-face contacts and access to a knowledge output database.

The EU project Micro B3 on marine microbial Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, and Biotechnology will develop innovative bioinformatic approaches and a legal framework to make large-scale data on marine viral, bacterial, archaeal and protists genomes and metagenomes accessible for marine ecosystems biology and to define new targets for biotechnological applications. Micro B3 will build upon a highly interdisciplinary consortium of 32 academic and industrial partners.

Micro B3 is based on a strong user- and data basis from ongoing European sampling campaigns to long-term ecological research sites. For the first time a strong link between oceanographic and molecular microbial research will be established to integrate global marine data with research on microbial biodiversity and functions. The Micro B3 Information System will provide innovative open source software for data-processing, -integration, -visualisation, and -accessibility. Interoperability will be the key for seamless data transfer of sequence and contextual data to public repositories.

Micro B3 will allow taking full advantage of current sequencing technologies to efficiently exploit large-scale sequence data in an environmental context. Micro B3 will create integrated knowledge to inform marine ecosystems biology and modeling. Moreover, it will facilitate detecting candidate genes to be explored by targeted laboratory experiments for biotechnology and for assigning potential functions to unknown genes. Micro B3 will develop clear IP agreements for the protection and sustainable use of pre-competitive microbial genetic resources and their exploitation in high potential commercial applications.

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Ocean Health Index receives mainstream press coverage

I've posted on the topic of the Ocean Health Index, which assesses the well-being of the world's seas,  before.  The collaborative project ranks oceans out of 100 depending in various factors including  As we know, the outlook is pretty dismal with our seas scoring an unsustainable average of just 65 out of 100.

Today this comment piece  published in the Guardian, UK caught my attention.  Greg Stone of Conservation International , which is involved in the Ocean Health Index project gives a clear overview of the aims and goals of the Ocean Heath Index.  

Although the content is nothing we haven't read before, I was really pleased to see that the project has gained some mainstream media coverage in the UK.

dirty sea (Photo credit: john thompson imagery)

Ocean Health Index signals new way of thinking about the sea

The Ocean Health Index, published online by Nature, signals a new way of thinking about our relationship with the ocean.

The Index is the first comprehensive, annual assessment of the benefits that a healthy ocean provides through 10 goals, which emphasise the human-ocean relationship. The overall global score is 60 out of 100, indicating that this relationship is out of balance and unsustainable.  

The Ocean Health Index is a collaborative project engaging over 65 scientists and ocean experts.  Consequently, no single entity owns it; the Index is an independent brand. 

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 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)