The Micro B3 Project

The EU 7FP project Micro B3 (Marine Microbial Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Biotechnology) develops 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 builds upon a highly interdisciplinary consortium of 32 academic and industrial partners comprising world-leading experts in bioinformatics, computer science, biology, ecology, oceanography, bioprospecting and biotechnology, as well as legal aspects.

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 has been established to integrate global marine data with research on microbial biodiversity and functions. The Micro B3 Information System provides innovative open source software for data-processing, -integration, -visualisation, and -accessibility. Interoperability is the key for seamless data transfer of sequence and contextual data to public repositories.

Micro B3 takes full advantage of current sequencing technologies to efficiently exploit large-scale sequence data in an environmental context. Micro B3 creates integrated knowledge to inform marine ecosystems biology and modeling. Moreover, it facilitates detecting candidate genes to be explored by targeted laboratory experiments for biotechnology and for assigning potential functions to unknown genes. Micro B3 develops clear IP agreements for the protection and sustainable use of pre-competitive microbial genetic resources and their exploitation in high potential commercial applications. To underline the translational character of Micro B3, outreach and training activities for diverse stakeholders are ongoing as well as an Ocean Sampling Day to transparently make project results accessible and gain valuable user feedback.

In a nutshell: read more about the intentions and goals to create Micro B3 (PDF, 941 kb).

STATUS
Micro B3 started on 01 January 2012 and finished on 31 December 2015.