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Credit: Pensoft
PROMICON’s consortium members gathered in Barcelona, Spain, for the project’s first Annual Meeting. On 20-21 June 2022, the Polytechnic University of Catalonia · BarcelonaTech (UPC) welcomed all project partners to discuss further project developments on the way towards inspiring new production pathways and a paradigm shift from monocultures to mixed cultures in biotechnology.
The Horizon 2020 project PROMICON (Harnessing the power of nature through PROductive MIcrobial CONsortia in biotechnology - measure, model, master) aims to develop an efficient biotechnological production platform that creates synergy between strain engineering strategies with the robustness of microbiomes and their metabolic plasticity in organic conversions. The project brings together experts and scientists from 10 institutions from 7 European countries.
The meeting took a rather non-conventional structure, with some of the highlights including scientific workshops and ‘Young Scientists’ interactive sessions. The opportunity to meet physically for the first time facilitated increased capacity building in the form of networking, informal and friendly exchange between consortium members, as well as the organisation of valuable workshops and exercises.
During the ‘Young Scientists Match-making Activity’ plenary session, the PhD students from each organisation were divided into round tables and provided insight into a specific technique/project/methodology. The workshop contributed to reaching important conclusions.
The partners got to understand deeply the value that the different members bring to the project. The unique background, capacity and expertise of each affiliate presents the ideal basis for future collaborations and knowledge exchange. In parallel, a Young Scientists Social Activity proved to be a sufficient opportunity for all early career researchers to network and discuss new ideas.
All team leaders went over the progress, challenges and initiatives of the PROMICON project during a coordination meeting. The main topics of discussion were the forthcoming publications and the suitable methods for dissemination. Throughout the second half of the project, concrete results in the form of scientific papers can be expected. Тhe upcoming research articles sparked a discourse around PROMICON’s future campaigns for further dissemination of the project outcomes.
“We are looking to use environmentally isolated and synthetically assembled microbiomes to produce useful chemicals, pigments and other materials”, says the Project Coordinator Dr. Jens O. Krömer (UFZ). “Microbiomes are basically bacteria living together in an interactive way and helping each other to solve the challenges of life, and we want to make use of this for our human purposes.”
During a visit to the UPC Labs, partners had the opportunity to tour the facilities and have a first-hand experience and demonstration of the different set-ups with cyanobacteria-enriched microbiomes. All members got to better understand each other's work in the project in more detail and were able to give ideas on how to further develop them. In reference to the exploitation of new ideas and results, Isle Utilities B.V. organised an Output Exploitation workshop, where the partners learned the importance of identifying the exploitation routes of their results, whether commercial or not, from an early stage. The Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) workshop, organised by UPC, shed light on how to use a hands-on approach to obtain the key stakeholders needed to complete PROMICON's S-LCAs. A stakeholder map was created to assess the social and sociological aspects, as well as the stakeholder’s impacts along the different stages of the life cycle. Resulting from the workshop, the consortium successfully came up with ways for targeting the right audiences and implementing their project achievements to better suit the stakeholders’ needs.
Last but not least, the Online Microbial Analysis Platform coordinated by AIMEN Technology Centre helped project members to gain a deeper knowledge of the current-edge hyperspectral technology used in the project.
Overall, throughout the event, participants continuously exchanged valuable ideas and conclusions, which will be further implemented over the course of the PROMICON duration.
This project receives funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101000733.