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Webinar "Microorganisms are allies"
The one-hour webinar will be presented by partners and experts from the IS_MIRRI21 project with background in microbiology and biotechnology who will convey the messages based on their field and professional experiences. The event will be a combination of presentations, quizzes and videos with dedicated sessions for the audiences to ask questions and interact with the speaker.
The key objectives of the event are:
- Present how EU funded projects such as IS_MIRRI21 are supporting the research and innovation ecosystem;
- Give an overall overview of how culture collections are used to preserve biodiversity and the roles of microbes in the sustainability of the environment;
- Discuss how microorganisms can be used by each and every citizen to create a sustainable world.
Agenda
| 11:00 | Welcome and introduction to speakers Tedora Aibu (SPI) |
| 11:05 | Demo session: Microbiome and Microorganisms for a Sustainable World Anna Poli (UNITO) |
| 11:20 | Let’s play: Quiz on microbial biodiversity and sustainability Giulia Cheloni (INRAE), Anna Poli (UNITO), Tedora Aibu (SPI) |
| 11:30 | Who we are and what we do in IS_MIRRI21/MIRRI Tedora Aibu (SPI) |
| 11:35 | Culture collections and their role in microbial biodiversity preservation and exploration Giulia Cheloni (INRAE) |
| 11:45 | Open floor: Q&A |
| 11:55 | Closing |
Contact us
For any additional information, please contact us at Franciscorocha@spi.pt and tedoraaibu@spi.pt.
MIRRI @ Ecomondo
La prof.ssa Giovanna Cristina Varese, Coordinatrice di MIRRI-IT, ha introdotto MIRRI e il contributo della Joint Research Unit MIRRI-IT con la presentazione “I mille volti dei microorganismi per la salute del suolo e lo sviluppo sostenibile: il ruolo della Joint Research Unit MIRRI-IT” nell’ambito del Webinar “Il mondo dei microrganismi del suolo: una risorsa da valorizzare per proteggere e salvaguardare la salute e la qualità dei suoli agricoli, le produzioni agroalimentari e l’ambiente“, organizzato da ENEA il 9 giugno 2021 sulla Piattaforma Digitale di Ecomondo come parte delle Digital Green Weeks.
Il suolo è una risorsa naturale di grande valore che contiene la più grande quantità di biomassa vivente dell’intero pianeta. La complessa rete di interazioni che si instaurano tra la moltitudine di esseri viventi presenti nel suolo contribuisce al mantenimento del suo stato di salute ed è alla base di beni necessari alla nostra sopravvivenza.
Il webinar ha voluto essere un momento di approfondimento e confronto sugli strumenti da mettere in atto per la difesa del suolo e la valorizzazione della biodiversità microbica. Garantire e promuovere la gestione sostenibile del suolo sta diventando sempre di più una priorità strategica e un tema trasversale che collega le aree della sicurezza alimentare, del cambiamento climatico, della biodiversità e della desertificazione.
L’infrastruttura di ricerca MIRRI rappresenta la più grande infrastruttura europea che si occupa di salvaguardare la biodiversità microbica e garantire la conservazione e la distribuzione dei microorganismi per favorire la sostenibilità ambientale, sviluppo biotecnologico e crescita della bioeconomia. Consorzi microbici multifunzionali composti da diverse specie con tratti complementari o sinergici sono i candidati di eccellenza per favorire l’aumento della produttività in presenza di stress biotici e abiotici, e contrastare il degrado del suolo, riducendo l’input di pesticidi e fertilizzanti azotati. La sfida è valorizzare la biodiversità microbica del suolo per aiutare la transizione agroecologica dell’agricoltura verso sistemi che salvaguardano il suolo e forniscono diete sani e sostenibili, in grado di conciliare i bisogni umani con la salute del Pianeta.
La presentazione è accessibile tramite questo link: MIRRI @ Ecomondo (PDF, Italiano).
ECCO XXXIX Virtual Meeting
We are glad to post the announcement of the next ECCO XXXIX Meeting on behalf of the organizers.
ECCO XXXIX Virtual Meeting
22-24 September, 2021
On behalf of the ECCO Board and the Local Organising Committee, Public Health England (PHE) Culture Collections would like to invite you to attend the 39th Annual Meeting of the European Culture Collections’ Organisation.
Following an unprecedented year and the postponement of the 2020 meeting due to COVID, this year the ECCO meeting will be held online for the first time in its history. Hosting of this meeting forms part of the centenary celebrations of PHE Culture Collections’ National Collection of Type Cultures (NCTC) one of the longest-established collections of its type which entered its 100th year in 2020.
Through six focussed sessions this virtual meeting aims to celebrate and debate culture collections, their history, present-day relevance and applications, and future direction. Topics include the role, validation and use of culture collections, access and benefit sharing and contributions to research and collaborative projects, microbiomes and the challenges of microbiome biobank development, the need for quality, safety, biosecurity and transportation standards, and advances in bioinformatics and data management.
Programme details will be available soon, and registration and abstract submission will open in June.
We look forward to connecting with you online in September!
Dr Bryan Bolton
Interim Head of PHE Culture Collections
Culture Collections as Hidden Sources of Microbial Biomolecules and Biodiversity
Guest Editors are inviting to consider submitting a manuscript to “Diversity” for a Special Issue on “Culture Collections as Hidden Sources of Microbial Biomolecules and Biodiversity”.
See the Editorial at https://doi.org/10.3390/d12070264.
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 July 2021.
The application of modern advanced techniques in molecular biology is revealing unexpected high levels of microbial diversity and complexity. However, the invisible loss of microbial diversity in the environment deriving, for example, from global changes and anthropogenic activities, is not really perceived.
In this context, culture collections worldwide has become a valuable resource for the sustainable use of microbial diversity and its conservation. They provide pure cultures and genetic materials that are required for a number of research (including systematics) and teaching purposes, as well as for bioprospecting aims (i.e., the search for novel bioproducts) and their subsequent exploitation in biotechnological fields (e.g., pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, cosmeceutical, agricultural, and food industries, as well as biorestoration).
For this Special Issue, Guest editors are looking for experimental studies and reviews relating to any aspect of the diversity, physiology, conservation, molecular biology, and biotechnology of prokaryotes and eukaryotes from microbial collections.
Keywords:
- Microbial isolates
- Culture collections
- Biotecnonological value
- Biodiversity conservation
More information about the special issue is available at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/diversity/special_issues/culture_collections.
Guest Editors
Dr. Angelina Lo Giudice, Institute of Polar Sciences (CNR-ISP), National Research Council, Messina, Italy
Dr. Carmen Rizzo, Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, National Institute of Biology, Messina, Italy
LTP database released
A valuable resource particularly for microbial taxonomists
After more than 1 year of work, the LTP database has been released.
The joint effort of the LTP team under the support of Elsevier, and specifically Systematic and Applied Microbiology, has resulted in the current release available at https://imedea.uib-csic.es/mmg/ltp/.
The new LTP database contains the sequences of all type strains with validly published names until December 2020, as well as all sequences of new species not yet listed in the notification lists of the IJSEM, but published in this journal.
This release has three major features:
- An improved alignment:
The LTP database in ARB format contains a new alignment that is derived from the improvement of the former universal alignment, but which has accommodated the new released sequences as well as it has been thoroughly revised. In addition, the LTP offers several conservational filters and gap and termini filters useful to reconstruct phylogenies and evaluate topologies. - New reconstructions of the global phylogeny of the classified species:
Two trees have been prepared, one with the best sequences and another containing in addition the sequences with more compromised phylogenetic signals. According to authors, this may be the best and most robust 16S rRNA gene phylogenies yet reconstructed. The trees are the result of evaluation of multiple maximum likelihood reconstructions. - List of taxa in the need to be evaluated:
In the accompanying manuscript that describes this release (Ludwig et al., 2021), the process of curation and tree reconstruction are explained and lists of taxa that may be susceptible of being evaluated and perhaps reclassified are provided. Taxa that do not fit in their overall taxonomic and phylogenetic framework have been highlighted.
See the information at:
Ludwig, W., Viver, T., Westram, R., Gago, J.F., Bustos-Caparros, E., Knittel, K., Amann, R., Rossello-Mora, R. (2021) Release LTP_12_2020, featuring a new ARB alignment and improved 16S rRNA tree for prokaryotic type strains. Syst Appl Microbiol 40: 126218. DOI: 10.1016/j.syapm.2021.126218.
Elsevier has granted this manuscript 6 months of free access for all who are interested in this new release.
Since December 2020, more than 400 species have been published and also there have been important changes in the classification (for example the Deltaproteobacteria). In about 1 month time, the LTP will be updated to offer the best proxy to the phylogeny of the classified taxa.
Enter in https://imedea.uib-csic.es/mmg/ltp/ to download the database and accompanying information, and register for a mailing list of users that want to get updated with the news and releases.
IS_MIRRI21 virtual events
Matchmaking for Horizon Europe opportunities and MIRRI membership
15 and 17 June 2021, 14:00 CEST
Held on the ZOOM platform
Register HERE for both events.
Organised by the University of Minho (UMinho) and Sociedade Portuguesa de Inovação (SPI) in collaboration with the RI-VIS H2020 project
Key presenters
Nelson Lima (University of Minho, UMinho); Joanna Bucka-Kolendo (Institute of Agricultural and Food Biotechnology, IAFB), Rosa Aznar (University of Valencia, UVEG-CECT), Gerard Verkleij (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie Van Wetenschappen, KNAW), Isabel Carvalho Oliveira, Maria João Fernandes, Cristiana Leandro and Daniel Carapau (Portugal-Europe R&I Network, PERIN)
Background
Implementation and Sustainability of Microbial Resource Research Infrastructure for the 21st Century (IS_MIRRI21) is a three-year project funded under the Horizon 2020 programme of the European Commission. IS_MIRRI21 is a scientific project that aims to establish a pan-European research infrastructure called Microbial Resource Research Infrastructure (MIRRI) as a sustainable entity with a set of its own diverse services and offers. IS_MIRRI21 took-off in February 2020 with 14 European partners and eight third parties, 20 of which are academic institutions and research infrastructures. The consortium members of IS_MIRRI21 are jointly working with the objective of alleviating the current fragmentation of bio-resource holdings and information, eliminating duplication and redundancy at the national and pan-European level.
MIRRI, as a sustainable end-product, intends to connect biological resource holders and researchers in order to facilitate the efficient delivery of resources and services and meet the needs of innovation in Life Sciences and biotechnology by driving collaboration across borders and disciplines. MIRRI is made up of more than 50 member organisations including academic institutions, microbial Biological Resource Centres (mBRCs), Culture Collections (CCs) and experts from 11 European countries (Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Latvia, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation and Spain). MIRRI is a non-profit RI designed through the collaboration of European research institutes, universities, culture collections and consultancy organisations with a special focus on the domains of Health & Food, Agro-Food, and Environment & Energy. MIRRI’s services and offers are supplied through the resources and expertise of its members to induce and sustain transnational cooperation and coordination in research and innovation within the sectors of Life Sciences and Biotechnology. In its present capacity, MIRRI holds over 600,000 strains of microorganisms and microbiological resources, over 70 different types of services (including training, education and consultancy offers) with more than 30 workflows and has more than 300 direct participants and beneficiaries in the organisation.
MIRRI will soon be recognised as an ERIC (European Research Infrastructure Consortium) to serve users from biosciences and bioindustry by facilitating access to a broad range of high quality bioresources and data in a legally compliant way. Through collaboration with other research infrastructures and by working with public authorities and policy makers, MIRRI contributes to the advancement of research and innovation in Europe to create a sustainable, competitive and resilient bioeconomy.
Whether as an expert, a Member State, an academic institution or a culture collection, MIRRI offers its members the opportunity to be part of a large and dynamic laboratory as a whole, sharing and exchanging knowledge, providing services, gaining visibility and playing a unique role in the European scientific research and innovation landscape of Food, Health, Agriculture, Energy, Environmental Sciences and more. MIRRI’s membership is open to a range of stakeholders in the global innovation community. With the objective of exploiting MIRRI’s resources through collaboration with other RIs in Europe and Latin America thereby advancing bioscience innovation and research, these two events have been set up with the aim of presenting opportunities to bring innovation actors in Life Sciences and biotechnology to the same table. In synergy with RI-VIS, a Horizon 2020 funded project designed to increase the visibility of European research infrastructures (RIs) to new communities in Europe and beyond, IS_MIRRI21 partners and innovation actors from Research and Development (R&D) frameworks in Europe will present funding opportunities for joint collaboration in the above-mentioned domains and how to become a member of MIRRI’s network.
Agendas
Both agendas for the webinar on 15 June and workshop on 17 June can be found here as well as in the web site of MIRRI-IT at Agenda of IS_MIRRI21 virtual events: Matchmaking for Horizon Europe opportunities and MIRRI membership.
Where to register?
Registration for both events is free but compulsory in order to receive the links and updates prior to the event. Registration is open until the launch of the events.
Registration link: https://forms.gle/fYr6f3rHchNjG3yF9
Contact us
For any additional information, please contact Franciscorocha@spi.pt and tedoraaibu@spi.pt.
La tradizione panaria verso l'innovazione
La tradizione panaria verso l’innovazione
Monday May 17, 2021, 15:30 CEST
Virtual Round Table
The microbial culture collection of the Department of Agriculture of the University of Sassari has organized a round table
Attend the event at the following link https://lnkd.in/dWxi3tT.
For any further information please contact microagrss@gmail.com.
STOA Workshop on microbiomes
Health and economic benefits of microbiomes
11 May 2021, 14:00 – 16:30 CEST
(online event)
In the last years, quite a lot of scientific knowledge made its way to the greater public raising interest in the human microbiomes, which is mostly understood as the universe of gut bacteria that determine our health status and wellbeing, our immune and hormonal systems. The microbiomes, indeed, are co-working key players in many natural processes within agriculture, food and drinking systems, waste degradation, recycling, and material creation.
Besides the production of more healthy, natural, and sustainable foods, innovations in agriculture and crop productions can already be seen with examples in plant control through bio-pesticides or climate-friendly waste degradation systems reusing and recycling materials and energy. Scientists are striving for discoveries in microbiological and microbial systems, and many exciting microbiome-related innovations can be expected in the next decades with relevant contributions to solve the challenges in human health, sustainable food production, biodiversity, and climate change.
This workshop, organised by STOA (Panel for the Future of Science and Technology of the European Parliament) is divided in two sessions: the first will discuss the clinical implications of microbiomes, while the second will analyses the economic and regulatory aspects of microbiomes.
The panel of speakers include Nassos Typas, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Germany, Emmanuelle Maguin, INRAE, France, Claudio Lunardi, University of Verona, Italy, Elisabetta Caselli, University of Ferrara, Italy, Lene Lange, LLa-BioEconomy, Denmark, Irene Verheijen, European Association for Food Law (EFLA), Angela Sessitsch, AIT Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT), Martha Hugas, European Food and Safety Agency (EFSA), and Kathleen d`Hondt, Flemish Government, Belgium.
Programme, booklet, presentations and recording are available here.
Free registration here.
MIRRI introductory video
We have the pleasure of sharing with you the introduction video for IS_MIRRI21.
The video is available on the IS_MIRRI21 website and YouTube channel.
MIRRI Strategic Research & Innovation Agenda 2021-2030
Putting microbes at the service of society and the bioeconomy
Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda
for 2021-2030
Braga, Portugal, 25 March 2021
The Microbial Resource Research Infrastructure (MIRRI), a pan-European research infrastructure that brings together over 50 scientific institutions, from 11 countries, has disclosed today its “Strategic Research & Innovation Agenda 2021-2030”.
Under the motto “Microbial resources for a green, healthy and sustainable future”, the Agenda intends to anticipate major trends and opportunities for the valorisation of microbial resources (i.e., microorganisms/microbes and their derivatives) for the sustainable development of society and the economy.
Historically used by humankind for its own benefit (for example, in food processing and preservation processes), microbial resources are today widely used by bioindustries in multiple applications, such as the production of medicines (for example, vaccines and antibiotics), food and beverages, biofertilizers, biopesticides, biofuels, or in the treatment and valorisation of waste and residues.
According to the Executive Director of MIRRI, Luís Soares, “the new Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda reveals MIRRI’s Vision to boost the use of microbial resources by the scientific community and bioindustries, until the end of this decade, in response to some of the greatest societal, environmental and economic challenges that Europe and the World will face, such as those related to the circular economy, human and planetary health, food security and safety, climate transition, decarbonisation or biodiversity”, adding that “MIRRI’s Strategic Agenda can serve as an inspiration for governmental authorities and for other agents of society and the economy in defining policies, programmes and initiatives that can lead to a more sustainable development”.
MIRRI’s Strategic Research & Innovation Agenda 2021-2030 is available for download at www.mirri.org.