AT A GLANCE Project Information


Project Title: BONUS BLUEPRINT


Project Objective: BONUS BLUEPRINT has combined field studies, experiments, next-generation sequencing, bioinformatics and modelling to achieve the overarching objective of establishing the capacity to reliably deduce Baltic Sea environmental status based on the biodiversity and genetic functional profiles of microbes in seawater samples.


Project Duration and Timing: 4 years, 1.1.2014-31.12.2017, with an extension to 31.04.2018


time-consuming and expensive. But with huge advances having been made in the last few years in terms of bioinformatics, gene sequencing, and the understanding of microbial life, the lack of microbial monitoring is making less and less sense.


The BONUS BLUEPRINT project, led by Lasse Riemann of the University of Copenhagen, hypothesised that genetic


microbial DNA (metagenomics) and RNA (metatranscriptomics) could therefore improve the monitoring of environmental status. Furthermore, genetic analyses would in addition provide information about key microbial processes in the water.


The BONUS BLUEPRINT project has consequently been collecting data at a large scale to demonstrate that monitoring


Project Funding: EUR 3.9 million; The BONUS Blueprint project was supported by BONUS (Art 185), funded jointly by the EU and the Danish Council for Independent Research, Swedish Research Council FORMAS, Academy of Finland, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Germany, and the Estonian Research Council


Project Partners: University of Copenhagen, Denmark KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden Stockholm University, Sweden Linnaeus University, Sweden University of Helsinki, Finland Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde, Germany University of Tartu, Estonia


MAIN CONTACT “For indicators of environmental status


which are currently in use it is possible to look back through decades of data to compare with the present”


data about microorganisms can be used as sensitive markers for environmental conditions such as changed nutrient ratios, pollution, hypoxia, and climate change. In other words, by looking at the genetic “blueprint”, i.e. the sum of all genes or their transcripts present in the microbes in a given sample of seawater, it should be possible to make accurate predictions about the environmental conditions from where the sample was taken. Analyses of


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using such methods is now a viable option for the Baltic Sea. They have successfully shown that there is a direct coupling between the genetic blueprint of microbes in a given sample of seawater with prevailing environmental conditions.


The project’s success has rested upon the collection of various types of data. Extensive cruises on the Baltic Sea collected samples of seawater from across


Lasse Riemann Professor Lasse Riemann has mainly focused his research on marine microbial ecology, with emphasis on the application of molecular tools to decipher bacterioplankton diversity, composition and functionality. He has extensive experience with Baltic Sea research and has published over 80 peer reviewed research articles in international journals on marine microbial ecology.


CONTACT: Tel: + 45 3532 1959 Email: lriemann@bio.ku.dk Web: http://blueprint-project.org


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