MIRRI NEWS | Issue 3

Dear all,

I hope all readers enjoyed the break over the Christmas time and relaxed sufficiently to tackle 2015 business.

For MIRRI, there is no time for contemplation; the New Year started as busy as the old one had ended: During a WP Leader meeting in Amsterdam at the beginning of September 2014 several issues raised in the Mid-term review were discussed, and the ERIC Statutes, the MIRRI Partner Charter, the Rules of Operations and the Terms of Use were drafted. This brings us one step closer in finalising the legal framework for the envisioned MIRRI-ERIC. In addition, the MIRRI Financial Plan was revised and a much better overview on costs and revenues is now outlined. These issues were also on the agenda during the 2^nd mBRCs Heads Meeting (December, Amsterdam) to discuss the future operational structure of MIRRI. The strategies resulting from all these discussions shaped the 3^rd Iteration Business Case (in print) and prepared the Steering Committee for the “easy” short assessment by ESFRI, just delivered on January 30^th, 2015.

The implementation of the Nagoya Protocol in October 2014 kept many of us busy in attending stakeholder workshops in Paris and Brussels to influence the guidance papers for its implementation and to explain phrases used in some articles of the basic EU Regulation concerning ABS. MIRRI has been and will be involved in the discussions on the implementation of the EU Regulation 511/2014, raising its voice for the microbial community. Updates on this topic can be found on the MIRRI website.

The results of the Horizon2020 applications have been published and our thanks go to the team at the UMinho-MUM for involving MIRRI in the Training Programme Ritrain, and to the DSMZ, UGent, CRBIP and CAB International for participating in MBRIC. The CORBEL project (with Jacobs University, CAB International, DSMZ, MUT, CBS) is on the reserve list for Infradev-4. Unfortunately, the Europe-Africa joint project BrinA (CRBIP, DSMZ, CAB International) will not be funded. Thanks to all MIRRI Partners who contributed in ideas and text to the various funded and non-funded Horizon2020 projects for positioning MIRRI on the European landscape of research infrastructures.

2015 will be the last year of the MIRRI Preparatory Phase, and several workshops and many deliverables are still ahead of us. We all should have a positive attitude; partners engagement at the national level have been very successful and we are well on the way to reach the required number of signatories for the Memorandum of Understanding and governmental support to initiate the MIRRI-ERIC legal status in 2016. I am confident that the MIRRI consortium will work hard to assure a smooth transfer into the Implementation Phase.

Kind regards,

Erko Stackebrandt
MIRRI Coordinator

The Culture Collection of Industrial Microorganisms is a part of the Prof. Waclaw Dabrowski Institute of Agricultural and Food Industry and one of the oldest industrial culture collections in Europe. Provision of comprehensive microbiological services for Polish biotechnological industry is an essential goal of IAFB. In its 60 years plus history CCIM/IAFB has developed and published many numbers of patents including new microbiological strains or technology solutions. Nowadays, to provide users with a high quality service, CCIM/IAFB cooperates with the Microbiological Department (lab accreditation according to standard ISO 17025) which provides a small scale fermentation line.
CCIM/IAFB preserves over 3,000 microorganisms with unique industrial features. The holding comprises a variety of microbiological taxa such as yeast (applied in winery, brewery), bacteria including pathogenic food isolates, lactic acid bacteria (used in the dairy industry) and fungi (agricultural isolates); preserved by lyophilisation and liquid nitrogen. Microorganisms stored in CCIM/IAFB find application in research on metabolic biodiversity of specific groups in various biotechnological processes related with food production and agriculture. This is especially valuable in the production of pro-health organic food obtained by traditional technology.
Microorganisms are characterized by traditional, physiological techniques as well as by molecular techniques such as PCR or qPCR. This is the first step towards finding connections between technological features and the genetics of microorganisms.
CCIM/IAFB is a partner of MIRRI, member of WFCC (since 1982) and ECCO (since 1993); it was a partner in the European Biological Resource Centres Network (EBRCN). Furthermore, it has the status International Depository Authority, accepting biological materials according to the requirements of the Budapest Treaty (since 2000).

CIRM (Centre International de Ressources Microbiennes) is a unique collection of microorganisms in France, run by INRA, one of the largest agricultural research agencies in the world. It is a network of five geographically distinct sites dedicated to food bacteria (CIRM-BIA), bacteria pathogens of humans and animals (CIRM-BP), plant associated bacteria (CIRM-CFBP), biotechnological yeasts (CIRM-Levures) and filamentous fungi (CIRM-CF), totalling over 20,000 isolates. The main mission of CIRM is to gather and preserve the microbial biodiversity of INRA to sustain research and innovation in the areas of agro-food, health, biotechnology and environment. These resources are made available to the international scientific community under high quality standards guaranteed by ISO 9001 certification. Each CIRM site is hosted by a research laboratory and therefore takes part in the ongoing research in its field of expertise. Indeed, CIRM participates in national and international research programs by making available their biological resources and their expertise resulting from up to 40 years of experience.
CIRM offers a wide array of services including safe deposit, identification and characterization of strains and high throughput screening for various phenotypic characteristics. CIRM has an efficient Information System which boasts three exhaustive taxonomy databases: lignocellulolytic fungi, plant associated bacteria and yeasts.
After coordinating the EU FP7 funded project EMbaRC (European Consortium of Microbial Resources Centres), CIRM now participates in the MIRRI project, being involved in several aspects such as the construction of the infrastructure, training, Information Technology and legal matters.
For CIRM and its coordinator, Serge Casaregola, MIRRI will facilitate the retrieval of the strains of interest by making available highly efficient tools allowing data mining of their constantly growing databases. In addition, MIRRI can facilitate collaborations with other ESFRI initiatives.

Jacobs University Bremen is a highly selective, private institution for the advancement of education and research. Its academic programs and cultural environment prepare graduates for international leadership and global citizenship. Research at the Jacobs University Bremen aims at key contributions in the following three areas: MOBILITY (of people, goods, and information), HEALTH (focus on bioactive substances) and DIVERSITY (of modern societies).
The expertise provided by Jacobs University into MIRRI is the management and integration of large, heterogeneous and complex data as well as the development of community standards for contextual (meta)data. With the envisioned MIRRI Information System designed as a “one-stop-shop” to serve the community with reliable data products, expertise and services, the European infrastructure MIRRI is a fascinating field of application, says Prof. Dr. Frank Oliver Glöckner, head of the Microbial Genomics and Bioinformatics Research Group.

EU-OPENSCREEN is a pan-European research infrastructure initiative to academic Chemical Biology research. MIRRI’s sister initiative is listed on the roadmap of ESFRI, the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures since 2008 and is currently in its Transition Phase aiming at the implementation of an ERIC in 2015.
As a joint effort of national networks in 16 European countries, EU-OPENSCREEN will collaboratively develop novel molecular tool compounds (i.e. chemical inhibitors or activators of biological targets) with users from various disciplines of the life sciences (e.g., microbiology, cell and molecular biology, early drug discovery). The use and study of these chemical tools is currently restrained by the fact that it requires significant resources and investment. EU-OPENSCREEN faces this challenge by integrating high-capacity screening platforms throughout Europe and offering access to unique shared resources and expertise to scientists. These include latest screening technologies, assay adaptation, follow-up chemistry services for “hit” optimization, and a unique compound collection composed of (up to 300,000) commercial and proprietary compounds collected from European chemists. By testing, systematically and repeatedly, this chemical collection in hundreds of assays originating from very different biological themes, the screening process generates enormous amounts of valuable information about the biological activities of the substances and thereby steadily enriches our understanding of how and where they act. All data collected during a screening will be published in a central European Chemical Biology Database, being accessible for the whole scientific community.
From the very beginning the close relationship between MIRRI and EU-OPENSCREEN was apparent: the infrastructures share a specific user clientele that needs to obtain microbial resources (from MIRRI) for producing compounds (to be screened at EU-OPENSCREEN facilities). Both infrastructures can support each other by providing their specific expertise and collaboration will be reinforced in cluster projects subject to H2020 funding like e.g. MBRIC.