Acronym BLUEPRINT
Category
Marine Biotechnology
Title Biological lenses using gene prints – developing a genetic tool for environmental monitoring in the Baltic Sea Programme BONUS
Instrument (FP6)
Contact Type (FP7)
Strand (Interreg)
NA
Theme (FP7)
Activity Area (FP6)
Regional Area (Interreg)
Action (COST)
NA
Specific Programme (FP7)
NA
Funding source National-European Coordinator Lasse Riemann Coordinator email lriemann@bio.ku.dk
Coordinator institution
KU - University of Copenhagen (Denmark)
Institutions involved
IOW - Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde (Germany) ,
LNU - Linnaeus University (Sweden) ,
KTH - Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden) ,
NA - Stockholm University (Sweden) ,
UH - University of Helsinki (Finland) ,
UT - University of Tartu (Estonia) ,
Start year 2014 End year 2018 Funding (€) € 3,874,299 Website NA Summary Prokaryotic microbes are principal drivers of carbon and nutrient biogeochemistry and account for a major fraction of pelagic biomass and productivity in the Baltic Sea. Still, these organisms are neither included among the indicators of environmental status currently in use nor considered as functional entities in biogeochemical models. This flaw has been highlighted by HELCOM and OSPAR in their work to coordinate the development of indicators and determining GES in the Baltic and North Sea areas. The last decade has witnessed a tremendous increase in the capacity of high-throughput technologies for retrieving and processing genetic information from environmental samples; this has given mechanistic understanding of microbially driven food-web processes and how microbes are affected by environmental conditions. Therefore, for the first time we can now in a cost-efficient manner make integrated use of this analysis capacity for developing a conceptual and methodological framework for the assessment of ecological status of the Baltic Sea ecosystem based on information on microbial functions and processes. Thus, BLUEPRINT will combine field studies, experiments, next-generation sequencing, bioinformatics and modeling to achieve the overarching objective: to establishing a capacity to reliably deduce Baltic Sea environmental status based on indicators reflecting the biodiversity and genetic functional profiles of microbes in seawater samples.
Keywords
Genetic;
Microbial communities;
Genomic sequencing;
Monitoring;
Biodiversity;
Indicators;
Pollution;
Bacteria;
Climate change;
Marine Region
17
Bothnian Sea (27.IIId.30)
19
Gulf of Finland (27.IIId.32)
23
Baltic West of Bornholm (27.IIId.24)
18
West of Gotland (27.IIId.27)
22
Southern Central Baltic-West (27.IIId.25)
20
Archipelago Sea (27.IIId. 29)
21
Southern Central Baltic-East (27.IIId.26)
27
Bothnian Bay (27.IIId.31)
16
East of Gotland or Gulf of Riga (27.IIId.28)
9
Marine Region Map
