The project INBioPharm receives the Centre for Digital Life Norway prize for transdisciplinary publication of the year 2020 for the paper "Enzyme-Constrained Models and Omics Analysis of Streptomyces coelicolor Reveal Metabolic Changes that Enhance Heterologous Production". The paper was published in the open access journal iScience in September 2020
Develops technology platform for exploration of compounds
INBioPharm is short for integrated novel natural product discovery and production platform for accelerated biopharmaceutical innovation from microbial biodiversity. The researchers in the project are developing a new technology platform that enables them to discover compounds with antibiotic properties.
They are hunting for bioactive compounds in marine microorganisms in the Trondheim fjord. The genes of the most interesting compounds are transferred to the host organism Streptomyces coelicolor that is easy to grow and control and can produce large amounts of the compounds for further exploration.
The INBioPharm project is a collaboration between SINTEF and NTNU and international partners from the US, Germany and Netherlands with experts in microbiology, molecular biology, systems biology, bioinformatics, mathematics and chemistry.
Integration of experimental and computational work
In the work behind the award-winning paper, they have studied how different genetic modifications affect the metabolism of a specific strain of Streptomyces coelicolor. The work covers a broad range of disciplines in biotechnology, including cultivation, sampling and analysis of transcriptomics, proteomics and exometabolomics. The data are analysed separately, but also used to tailor genome-scale metabolic models according to specific strains and time-steps. It is truly an effort where experimental and computational work is integrated, fully in line with the ambitions of the Centre for Digital Life Norway (DLN).
InBioPharm has been a central DLN project since the centre started in 2016 and the current publication fully demonstrate that they have generated high quality transdisciplinary scientific results in line with the Digital Life Norway ambitions, says scientific director Trygve Brautaset.
Next Wednesday is another big day for Snorre Sulheim. He will defend his PhD thesis “Assembly and application of genome-scale metabolic models to study Streptomyces coelicolor and Prochlorococcus” 24 March. The topic of his trial lecture is “The relative merits of deep learning and more mechanistic models in systems biology”.
About the award and former winners
The transdisciplinary prize is given to research projects in the Centre for Digital Life Norway that have published studies resulting from highly transdisciplinary research efforts. In addition, to stimulate visibility of the DLN research, there is a strict criterium for that the awarded publications clearly states its connection to the centre.
The grant of NOK 50 000 will be transferred to the project and can be spent within the frames set by governmental regulations.
Former winners
- 2019: PerCathe – personalized cancer therapy
Toward Personalized Computer Simulation of Breast Cancer Treatment: A Multiscale Pharmacokinetic and Pharmacodynamic Model Informed by Multitype Patient Data
Read the news article about the prize. - 2018: DIAP – Double Intraperitoneal Artificial Pancreas – An easier life with diabetes
Sensor location on continuous intraperitoneal glucose sensing in an animal model
Read the news article about the prize. - 2017: DigiBrain – from genes to brain function in health and disease
Removal of Perineuronal Nets Unlocks Juvenile Plasticity Through Network Mechanisms of Decreased Inhibition and Increased Gamma Activity
Read the news article about the prize.