FP6 - 3998 Biotool - Biological procedures for diagnosing the status and predicting evolution of polluted environments

Contacts
Website: www.gbf.de/biotools/




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Biotechnology : Sustainable Development and Renewable Energy

Type of Project	STREP
Contract No	FP6 - 3998
Total Cost	2,660 KEuro
EC Contribution	1,800 KEuro
Start Date	29-11-2004
Duration	33 Months

Abstract

The objective of BIOTOOL is the generation and validation of novel conceptual and material instruments, rooted in biological processes, for diagnosing soil status and predicting evolution of contaminated soil and groundwater. The focus is on the assessment and evaluation of natural attenuation processes. This will require benchmarked monitoring tools and warning criteria to implement natural attenuation as the key groundwater and soil remediation strategy in Europe. It will be materialized through the application of a suite of state-of-the-art genomic, proteomic and analytical technologies to environmental samples and sites themselves.

It will examine the translocation of indicator chemicals from below ground into above-ground vegetation as a cheap and rapid monitoring tool for subsurface contamination. Diagnosis of the biological status and evolution models for polluted environments will be achieved through

• the design and utilization of DNA and specifically DNA-array technology for examining the catabolic potential of any given particulate sample and
• the identification of protein biomarkers as descriptors of soil and groundwater quality and biological attenuation clocks.

The progress in microbial community functional genomics and proteomics will be employed to gain a mechanistic understanding of prevailing stresses, global responses to chemical insults, plant/microbe interactions and microbial community adaptations that determine microbial-driven soil and groundwater processes. This will add a considerable predictive power to the genomic and proteomic approaches mentioned above. Determining the links between environmental factors and expression of degradation abilities will be crucial for strategies aiming at an optimal expression of the catalytic power of the indigenous microbial community.

Coordinator

Gesellschaft Für Biotechnologische Forschung Mbh, Germnay

Partners

• Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Spain
• Technical University of Denmak, Denmark
• Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland
• Institute of Microbiology, AS CR, Czech Republic
• National Environmental Research Institute, Denmark Roskilde 6
• UFZ - Umweltforschungszentrum Leipzig - Halle GmbH, Germany
• KAP Ltd, Czech Republic
• Bionostra, S.L, Spain

Contacts

Contact

• Dietmar Helmut PIEPER / Gesellschaft für Biotechnologische Forschung mbH GERMANY