Project description:Marine microalgae (phytoplankton) mediate almost half of the worldwide photosynthetic carbon dioxide fixation and therefore play a pivotal role in global carbon cycling, most prominently during massive phytoplankton blooms. Phytoplankton biomass consists of considerable proportions of polysaccharides, substantial parts of which are rapidly remineralized by heterotrophic bacteria. We analyzed the diversity, activity and functional potential of such polysaccharide-degrading bacteria in different size fractions during a diverse spring phytoplankton bloom at Helgoland Roads (southern North Sea) at high temporal resolution using microscopic, physicochemical, biodiversity, metagenome and metaproteome analyses.
Project description:The conservation and growth of natural capital accumulated in the seas and oceans is essential for the provision of sustainable ecosystem services and for the achievement of the EU’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the UN for 2030. Therefore, Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) offers a comprehensive and holistic approach for the protection of the European sea, acting as an environmental pillar of the EU’s broader maritime strategy. The blue economy conveys that a healthier sea is a more productive sea. Concretely, blue biotechnology, which uses, among others, shellfish, bacteria and algae for development in health care and energy production, needs a healthy ocean, biodiversity and biomass abundance to provide innovative substances that help in the production in innovative medicines for the maintenance of human health. Moreover, marine biomass has become a potent source of new and innovative biotechnological tools for new therapeutic strategies and compounds that will increases the utility of marine biomass valorization processes and the quest of new solutions to present diseases. Recently, proteomics approaches has highlighted its potential use to discover new activities with potential biotechnological applications from proteome data through “applied proteomics”. Finally, in the context of global climate change, it is also becoming more and more demanding to anticipate alterations and responses of bioindicator species and to create a database to prevent and predict the environmental and climatic changes before the damage being irreversible. In this project, The proteome analysis of the sea anemone, Anemonia sulcata and its symbiont will lead to the identification of gene expression biomarkers (GEBs), as emerging powerful diagnostic tools, for identifying and characterizing climate change drivers (temperature and irradiance) stress and improving monitoring techniques. In addition, By the application of novel algorithms to detect bioactive compounds based on the analysis of proteome marine-derived molecules will enable the identification of proteins with potential applications in agri-food and biomedicine fields.