Eurofungbase - Strategy to build up and maintain an integrated sustainable European fungal genomic database required for innovative genomics research on filamentous fungi important for biotechnology and human health
- EC contribution
- : € 485.874
- Duration
- : 36 months
- Starting date
- : 01/11/2005
- Funding scheme
- : Coordinated Action
- Keywords
- : -
- Contract/Grant agreement number
- : LSSG-CT-2005-018964
- Project web-site
- : http://www.eurofung.net (to be further updated)
Background:
The Eurofung project is a Coordination Action. The consortium counts 32 member laboratories, three of which have partner status. A Fungal Industrial Platform (FIP) of 13 members is also associated with the project.
The objectives of the project are to develop the tools and the technologies necessary to enable innovative functional genomic research of hyphal fungi. In that context it is also essential as a community to develop a strategy to set up and maintain a sustainable database.
The project focuses on several filamentous fungi for different reasons. Aspergillus nidulans has a long record of use as a fungal model organism. Aspergillus niger, Trichoderma reesei and Penicillium chrysogenum are important cell factories used for the production of enzymes and metabolites including compounds such as ß-lactams with benefits to human health.
The human pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus serves not only as a model pathogen, but becomes more and more a serious threat to human health. The project contributes to create the conditions and facilities within Europe to widely apply all genomics technologies in filamentous fungal research. This will greatly expand our knowledge about filamentous fungi. This new genomics information will thus be beneficial to Europe's biotechnology industries and help to improve the prevention and treatment of fungal disease.
Problem:
Wide spread genomic research leads to enormous amounts of data which will be stored in many small databases all over Europe. For integrated European genomic research it is important that such data become easily accessible for all researchers.
Aim:
The aim is to develop a strategy to build up and maintain an integrated, sustainable European genomic database required for innovative genomics research of filamentous fungal model organisms of interest. This database will become a crystallisation point for related systems and then could be integrated and conserved in a central European genomic database.
Expected and obtained results:
The main results expected from this project are:
The contribution of the community to the manual annotation of important fungal genomes through annotation jamborees.
- The realization of an integrated sustainable fungal genomic database through collaboration with bioinformatics centers and incorporation of the community data.
- The realization of a fungal genomics knowledge base for the Eurofungbase community and the European fungal biotech industry through meetings, workshops and web-based information.
- Intensified collaboration between the members of the network including the participating industries, thus strengthening the infrastructure for high quality fungal genomics research in Europe and furthermore determining joint research targets for the future.
- Individualized training of a next generation of young scientists in fungal genomics and biotechnological research.
Potential applications:
The results from the project are expected to have a number of potential applications such as:
- The fabrication of high quality micro-arrays will be facilitated as this depends strongly on the quality of the annotation of the relevant fungal genomes.
- Optimization of fungal fermentation processes and the discovery of novel products (enzymes, metabolites).
- Reconstruction of the metabolic potential of fungi to facilitate metabolic engineering of existing pathways and the introduction of novel pathways for industrial metabolite production.
- Identification of genes unique for fungi to develop new anti-fungal targets.
Fungi play an important role in White Biotechnology (e.g. biomass saccharification, biorefinery).The results of this project will find their way in new experimental approaches in those areas.
Coordinator:
Leiden Universiteit
Institute Biology Leiden
Wassenaarseweg 64
2333 AL Leiden, Netherlands
Tel. +31 071 527 4938
E-mail: eurofung@biology.leidenuniv.nl
Partners:
The consortium consists of 32 member laboratories of which 3 have a partner status. For the full list of participants and a list of members of the Fungal Industrial Platform see www.eurofung.net
http://eurofung.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=13&Itemid=14 and
http://eurofung.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=12&Itemid=15 online.
University of Manchester
School of Biological Sciences
Manchester, England, UK
Prof. Dave Ussery
Technical University of Denmark
Center for Biological Sequence Analysis
Lyngby, Denmark