iBB

Prof. Vasco Bonifácio, from the Bioengineering Department at IST, gave an invited keynote lecture in the American Advanced Materials Congress that took place in Miami (USA) from 29 October to 5 November 2022. The lecture “Sustainable Biomaterials” was focused on research developed by his research team in the last years at iBB-Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences (IST), including recent achievements and ongoing research using nanobiomaterials. The lecture highlighted the importance of the development of new sustainable protocols for the synthesis and formulation of nanotherapeutics as well as its impact on the design and production of novel biomaterials for regenerative medicine. This research is full aligned with the green transition, a social change strategy that will allow us to turn the current environmentally unsustainable global situation into a new sustainable paradigm. Also, it takes in account the European Green Deal that aims to make Europe climate neutral by 2050 and boost the economy through green technology. In this congress, Prof. Vasco Bonifácio also chaired two scientific sessions.

Dr Tina Keller-Costa, BSRG-iBB researcher, and Matilde Marques, MIT Portugal PhD student in Biotechnology and Biosciences, attended the International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS), held from 03 to 08 July 2022 in Bremen, Germany. Tina gave a talk on her latest metagenomics studies on the octocoral microbiome while Matilde presented a poster on viruses and bacteriophage communities of octocorals and seawater. The event was hosted by the University of Bremen and counted with 1050 in-person and over 270 virtual participants. To enable a science-to-policy dialogue the symposium also welcomed leading German and international politicians, as well Prince Albert II of Monaco and H.H. Princess Mashael Saud AlShalan from Saudi Arabia, who advocated for ocean conservation and sustainability. It was the first time in its 50-years history that ICRS was brought to Europe and the first carbon neutral ICRS.

Sandra Godinho Silva, PhD candidate in Biotechnology and Biosciences, presented a talk entitled 'Big data meets natural products discovery: mining thousands of bacterial genomes to identify novel sources of drug leads' at the FEMS Conference on Microbiology 2022, held from 30 June to 2 July 2022 in Belgrade, Serbia. Her presentation explored the results of a large-scale comparative genomics approach to study natural product biosynthesis potential across 2680 bacterial genomes representing 1158 species and 175 genera of the metabolically-versatile order Flavobacteriales (phylum Bacteroidetes). Sandra was awarded a FEMS Research and Training Grant (GO-2019-511) to conduct her studies in the framework of an international collaboration on high-throughput genome mining led by Prof. Rodrigo Costa (BSRG-iBB, Portugal) and Dr. Ulisses N. da Rocha (Microbial Data Science Group, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ , Leipzig, Germany). The results will be compiled in Sandra’s PhD thesis, under the supervision of Prof. Rodrigo Costa and Dr. Tina Keller Costa (BSRG-iBB). Sandra also had the opportunity to co-chair an oral poster session with Prof. Bauke Oudega on 'FEMS Supported Projects & Miscellaneous', and her participation in the FEMS 2022 Conference was supported by a FEMS Congress Attendance Grant.

In her talk at the 14th International Coral Reef Symposium, taking place online from 19-23 July 2021, Tina Keller-Costa presented her latest comparative metagenomics study on the functional features of the microbiomes of healthy and diseased octocoral tissue.  This conference, granted every 4 years by the International Coral Reef Society (ICRS), brings together 1300 scientists from 80 countries to discuss coral reef science, management, and conservation policies. The symposium is a key event to develop science-based solutions addressing the present and future challenges of coral reefs, which are globally exposed to unprecedented anthropogenic pressures.

Carlos JC Rodrigues and Carla CCR de Carvalho (iBB-BERG) presented their work in EFB2021, the major scientific conference organised by the European Federation of Biotechnology. The two studies presented focused on the marine environment as a source of biocatalysts for suitable bioprocesses, and on using microbial heterogeneity to improve bioprocesses. The virtual conference took place during May 10th-14th.

Ricardo Ribeiro, IST PhD student in Biotechnology and Biosciences
from the FCT doctoral programme in Applied and Environmental
Microbiology (DP_AEM), at iBB-BSRG, presented his work during the symposium on “Molecular Microbiology and Microbial Physiology” of the Congress of Microbiology and Biotechnology 2019 (Microbiotec’19) which was held between the 5th and 7th of December 2019 in Coimbra, Portugal. The presentation was entitled “Yeast response and tolerance to acetic acid: focus on the cell envelope” This work was carried out under supervision of Prof. Dr. Isabel Sá- Correia (iBB-BSRG) and the collaboration of Dr. Mário Rodrigues’s team (BioISI), for the atomic force microscopy characterization of cell wall properties.

Luís Miguel Martins, PhD student from the AEM doctoral programme in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, at iBB-BSRG, presented his work during the symposium on “Bioeconomy and Sustainable Development“   of the Congress of Microbiology and Biotechnology 2019 (Microbiotec’19), which was held between the 5th and 7th of December 2019 in Coimbra, Portugal. The presentation was entitled “Isolation and potential of non-conventional yeasts for the production of added-value compounds from pectin-rich residues, in particular sugar beet pulp”. This work was carried out under the supervision of Prof. Isabel Sá-Correia (iBB-BSRG) in the framework of ERANET-Industrial Biotechnology project ERA-IB-2/0003/2015 “Engineering of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae for bioconversion of pectin-containing agro-industrial side-streams”.

Diogo Faria, PhD candidate at BIOTECnico Programme in IBB-BERG, gave a poster presentation at the conference "Integrated Continuous Biomanufacturing IV", organized by ECI (Engineering Conferences International), held in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in October 6-9. The poster was about Continuous Aqueous Two-Phase System Extraction using Oscillatory Flow Reactor. The work was carried out under the supervision of Prof. Ana Azevedo (IBB-BERG) and Prof. Raquel Aires Barros (iBB-BERG), with colaboration of António Ferreira (FEUP).

The conference "Integrated Continuous Biomanufacturing IV", organized by ECI (Engineering Conferences International), was held in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in October 6-9. Ana Azevedo from BERG-iBB chaired session 5 on the "Validation of Integrated Continuous Processes" together with Raquel Orozco from Boheringer Ingelheim. Ana was further selected by the steering committee to chair the next ICB conference in 2021.

Sara Morini from SCERG-iBB delivered an oral presentation at the 15th Mediterranean Conference on Medical and Biological Engineering and Computing (MEDICON). Sara presented her PhD work in a presentation entitled: “Isolation, characterization and dynamic expansion of non-parenchymal cells for the recellularization of a porcine whole liver”. The work involves a collaboration between iBB and IIS Aragón (Zaragoza, Spain), being supervised at IST by Dr. Ana Fernandes-Platzgummer and Prof. Pedro M. Baptista at IIS Aragón. The conference took place in Coimbra, Portugal on the 26-28th September.

Carla CCR de Carvalho (iBB-BERG) presented the work entitled “Marine bioprocesses with bacteria from the Portuguese coast” at the “One Sustainable Ocean”, a side event of the UN Ocean conference (UNOC) held in Lisbon. The UN Ocean Conference, co-hosted by the Governments of Kenya and Portugal, aimed at starting a new chapter of global ocean action.

Marta Mota, a PhD student of the Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, PhD program in Biotechnology and Biosciences, (FCT doctoral programme in Applied and Environmental Microbiology (DP_AEM)), presented her work during the symposium on “Microbiotech for a Sustainable Future” of Microbiotec’ 21 Congress taking place online from 23-26 November. The presentation was entitled “Promising Genetic Determinants of Methanol Tolerance for Yeast Robustness Engineering for Biorefineries”. This work was performed in the Biological Sciences Research Group of iBB - Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, under Professor Isabel Sá-Correia’s supervision.

Microbiome research has grown considerably in the past few years, producing large amounts of data to address current and future societal challenges. ELIXIR, the European Infrastructure for Biological Data, and BioData.pt, the Portuguese node of Elixir, are assembling a national microbiome community to address these challenges and promote data findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reuse, as well as knowledge exchange, among Portuguese and European researchers. In this context, the 1st Microbiome Summit took place last February 4th 2021, and counted on contributions from several BSRG-iBB members, including doctorate researchers Nuno Borges and Tina Keller-Costa, PhD students Sandra Godinho Silva, Rúben Silva and Gracinda Sanches-Fernandes who all prepared short videos about their latest research, and Prof. Rodrigo Costa, who gave an invited talk entitled “The microbiome of marine sponges: diversity, function and biotechnology”.

Nuno Bourbon, PhD student from the BIOTECnico doctoral programme at iBB-BSRG, presented his work during the symposium on “Industrial and Food Microbiology” of the Congress of Microbiology and Biotechnology 2019 (Microbiotec’19), which was held between the 5th and 7th of December 2019 in Coimbra, Portugal. The presentation, entitled “Use of Hanseniaspora guilliermondii and Hanseniaspora opuntiae in co-fermentation with Saccharomyces cerevisiae to enhance the aromatic profile of craft beer”, focused on the potential of using two distinct Hanseniaspora yeast species to improve the organoleptic properties of beer. This work was carried out under the supervision of Prof. Isabel Sá-Correia (iBB-BSRG) and Dr. Margarida Palma (iBB-BSRG), in collaboration with Prof. Maria Rosário Bronze’s team (IBET and Faculty of Pharmacy, ULisboa, for the analysis of volatile compounds).

Ana Azevedo from BERG-iBB was invited to deliver a presention on continuous purification of antibodies at the European Summit of Industrial Biotecnology, in a special session dedicated to the Continuous Downstream Processing of the Biomolecules of the future. The section included also presentations from Novartis, Merck and Sanofi. The summit was held on the 18th – 20th November 2019, in Graz, Austria.

Ricardo Ribeiro, PhD student from the PhD program AEM - Applied

Environmental Microbiology delivered an oral presentation at the 7th Conference on Physiology of Yeast and Filamentous Fungi titled “Yeast response and tolerance to acetic acid: focus on the cell envelope” The work involves a collaboration between researchers from BSRG-iBB and BioISI. The meeting brought together researchers to exchange knowledge in the field of applied

physiology of yeasts and filamentous fungi, boosting the  understanding of these systems, envisaging their application in biotechnological, food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries. The conference took place in Milan, Italy, on the 24th-27th June.

André Nascimento from BERG-IBB delivered an oral presentation at the Affinity 2019 Conference titled “Debottlenecking process development using a microfluidic high-throughput platfrom”. The work involves a collaboration between researchers from BERG-iBB and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The meeting brought together scientists and engineers from academia and industry to exchange knowledge in the field of affinity technology, molecular recognition and its application in industry for health and disease, bioprocessing and biosensing. The conference took place in Stockholm on the 26-18 th June.