M&B – Microbiology & Biotechnology

M&B-BioISI has a plastic, project-oriented organizational structure under the global guidance of the Research Group Leader (RGL). Each project is ruled by the proponent PI/supervisor or the PI designated by the RGL. The group’s infrastructure is organized around the open-lab status of the ‘Bugworkers Lab’, that harbors the group and is the support lab for the SMEs incubated at ICAT-TecLabs Innovation Center of FCUL.

M&B-BioISI holds a collection of more than 2000 microbes (bacteria, yeasts and molds), collected from habitats so diverse as humans, plants, insects, saltmarshes, acid mines, hydrothermal vents and wine/must, ancillary to countless fields of biotechnological exploitation.

Specific lines of research following the rainbow of “biotech colours ” include : 1) yellow and white biotech – development and integrative characterization of adaptive evolved wine yeasts with higher performance and increased stress tolerance; 2) gold and red biotech – development of computational pipelines for identification of molecular targets for development of therapeutic compounds; determination of mechanisms of action based on Biolog phenoarrays; 3) Grey biotech – design and validation of new microbial consortia for water treatment; 4) Blue biotech – omics-based characterization of marine microbes for bioactivity profiles; development of novel bioactives for personal care, therapeutics, agrosciences, greener industrial processes; 5) Black biotech – development of antimicrobial agents against Bacillus anthracis.

M&B-BioISI will be mainly associated with BioISI Thematic Strand of Biotechnology & Biofoods but cooperative interactions will be promoted for integrative research within the other thematic strands of Biomedicine, Biological Physics and Bioinformatics & Modelling.