Methodology
All organisms could in principle be cultivated in a laboratory environment, provided the right growth medium and conditions are present. However, the possibilities to vary medium composition and growth conditions are infinite. A solution to this potentially endless dilemma is to refine the process by applying automated high-throughput techniques to increase the rate of isolation as well as using intelligent, nature-mimicking cultivation approaches to optimise growth.
The MaCuMBA project will employ a variety of such techniques which will be applied for the first time on a large scale and to a variety of different environments and types of microorganisms. MaCuMBA targets two main oceanic areas:
i) the photic zone with their highly diverse microbial communities, and
ii) deep extreme ecosystems in which it is expected that due to extreme environmental conditions many new molecules and enzymes with unusual properties will be discovered.
