Successful Micro B3 - MetaExplore - Industry Expert Workshop

The first joint Micro B3-MetaExplore Industrial Expert Workshop, titled “Harvesting environmental genomes for the development of biocatalysts”, was organized at the University Groningen, on the 14 and 15 of October 2013.

A total of 69 participants from industry and academia from 16 different European countries met for this two-day workshop. They exchanged the current approaches on the discovery of new bioactive compounds and how new tools could support the understanding of complex genomic and proteomic data for use in engineering of new enzymes and production of small molecules.      

The scientific programme, which included 17 invited speakers from academia and industry, was divided into sessions on new enzyme discovery and engineering, bioinformatics as well as industrial needs and databases. Also a poster session was organized during the workshop.

Finally, a panel of industrial representative from large and small companies and EU project coordinators discussed the use of bioinformatics and genomics services and tools for predicting and discovering new compounds and pathways of interest to industry. The panel recommends the setting up of an international database for enzyme functions with a standardized set of contextual (meta)data. This would combine ‘Omics’ and experimental data from academia and industries worldwide to enable more applied knowledge to be generated from existing and upcoming data.

For further information please visit the website of the workshop:

http://www.rug.nl/research/gbb/education/workshop/microb3-metaexplore/