Dipartimento di Informatica

Developing white and green biotechnologies by converging platforms from biology and information technology towards
metagenomics

Converging Technologies 2007, area: Biotechnology-ICT, Regione Piemonte (January 2009 - January 2012)

The project will integrate Biology and Information Technology platforms applying them to a soil Metagenomics system. The goal is to identify new molecules relevant for agrochemical industries. The study will start from a complex biological system, consisting of three levels:

i) populations of uncultivable bacteria living inside a symbiotic, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus (AMF),

ii) AMFs which associate to plant roots and originate the most widespread symbiosis in the plant kingdom, and

iii) plant roots.

This tripartite system will be investigated as a source of undescribed molecules/metabolic pathways, and will also be
analysed with simulation tools. AMFs are fundamental in projects of sustainable agriculture, they furnish a better mineral nutrition and are considered crucial means for improving the plant health increasing pathogen resistance. In addition to this widely recognised aspects, AMFs could also be exploited as a still unknown resource to promote green (agriculture) and white (industrial) biotechnologies.

URL: http://www.biobits.di.unipmn.it