Development of new technologies in metagenome establishment and screening

Our group has two ongoing projects in bioprospecting, with a particular focus on metagenomics, which involves the cloning of DNA directly isolated form the environment. This will lead to gene libraries that will later have to be screened. The main strengt h in our group is to develop vector systems with superior properties for cloning and screening. We do, however, lack extensive experience in the cloning process itself for environmental DNA, and the same is true for screening of such libraries. At a meeti ng in bioprospecting arranged in Tromsø this year we established contact with a group in the USA that are specialists in these two areas, while they have no particular strength in vector developments. This group, represented by Dr. Mark Liles (invited lec turer to the conference) is also in close contact with a new company that is specializing in this field. Through Dr. Liles we are now also in contact with this company. At the meeting in Tromsø we both realized that we have very complementary types of com petenece and that we therefore both have a lot to gain by collaborating. The funding will be used to cover travelling costs both ways, and for us the specific gains we can foresee involve mainly insights into technologies for cloning environmental DNA, su ch as construction of big insert size libraries. We know that the vectors we have developed are capable of carrying such inserts, but is is technically difficult to make such libraries from environmental DNA. Secondly, we have very little experience with screenig of metagenome libraries, while this is a specialty in the laboratory of Dr. Liles. We will therefore send a PhD student to his lab or ask somebody from their laboratory to come and work with us on screening. We have also discussed a more extensiv e collaboration involving funding of salaries in an integrated project. If such a funding opprotunity becomes available we will use some of the money applied for here to establish pre-projects (travelling costs).