Oceanographic Observatory of Banyuls-sur-Mer, France.
Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research, Portugal.
farming and we can support research in several species of fish and molluscs,” he stresses.
Joint Research Activities
Oceans of opportunity in marine research Marine biologists study marine organisms and interactions with their environment, and their work can yield knowledge, products and services relevant to many areas of science and industry. The ASSEMBLE Plus project provides scientists with free access to marine biological stations, with the aim of stimulating excellent research for the benefit of society, as Dr Nicolas Pade and Georgia Bayliss-Brown explain. The world’s oceans hold great scientific interest, and marine biological stations have been established across the globe to support researchers and help them to explore the secrets of our oceans. Alongside its inherent interest, marine-based research can also yield products and services relevant to many different areas of science and industry, a point central to the work of the EU-funded ASSEMBLE Plus project (October 2017 to September 2022). “ASSEMBLE Plus is about enabling research with marine organisms, for example making accessible biological organisms from marine environments to a wide community of scientists in Europe and around the world,” says Dr Nicolas Pade, the scientific coordinator of the project.
Transnational Access Programme ASSEMBLE Plus offers scientists fully-funded access to 39 marine biological research stations, mainly in coastal areas around Europe. Scientists can apply to use the facilities either remotely or in person through the transnational access (TA) programme, which gives researchers the opportunity to work at marine biological stations outside the country where they are located. “With the TA projects we effectively serve as seed funding, allowing researchers to explore new ideas, test new theories, and push the limits of our knowledge and understanding,” outlines Dr Pade. “Very often these TA projects allow people to investigate areas that maybe haven’t yet been picked up as a mainstream research topic.” The opportunity to conduct this kind of exploratory research is highly valued, while
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Developing monitoring equipment (Photo: Flanders Marine Institute, Belgium).
Researchers can come out on the boat and take the samples that they need,” says Dr Pade. “This is something that is very much in demand.” One of the benefits of Assemble Plus is the possibility of interdisciplinary cooperation. Scientists from outside the marine biology field can apply, and this has led to novel and exciting findings. One example that Dr Pade cites is a project that involved looking at cartilage in rays. “The researchers involved in this project were interested in cartilage from a medical perspective. From working on these unfamiliar
There are also five Joint Research Activities (JRAs) within the project. The five JRAs (see Box 1) are an important part of the ASSEMBLE Plus project, each addressing different challenges in modern marine biology: genomic observatories, cryobanking, functional genomics, scientific diving and the development of instrumentation. “The aim here is to create new tools and methods that allow people to conduct research. For example, in the JRA focused on functional genomics, we’re developing methodologies to modify various organisms,” says Dr Pade. “In many cases this involves taking the gene editing technology and looking at how it can be applied in a different organism.” A further JRA is centred on genomics observatories, using samples collected on Ocean Deploying equipment at-sea (Photo: Flanders Marine Institute, Belgium).
ASSEMBLE Plus is about strengthening Europe’s capabilities in marine biological research by bringing researchers together to share skills, knowledge and equipment. there is also a lot of interest from industry in using resources from marine environments, for example in the development of new drugs. Regardless of whether a proposal is focused on applied or fundamental research, Dr Pade says the main criteria in assessing it are scientific quality and feasibility. “How good is the proposal? We also assess whether the project is feasible. A project may be scientifically sound and exciting, but can it be done at a particular location? Most of our facilities are really quite modular, so we can accommodate most proposals, provided we know in advance that we need the facilities to be set-up in a specific way,” he outlines. Some of the stations have small coastal vessels, which researchers can use to collect samples. “We have professional scientific divers to collect samples and deploy equipment.
marine organisms, they found that rays were extremely good models in cartilage research, and they learned a lot about cartilage that they didn’t know before,” he outlines. As indicated, a wide variety of projects have been supported under ASSEMBLE Plus, including many that contribute to the wider Blue Growth agenda, the long-term strategy led by the European Commission to support sustainable growth in the marine and maritime sectors. One major part of this is bio-prospecting, the search for certain types of molecules that could lead to the development of new products, while Dr Pade says the project has also supported aquaculture research. “There are possibilities to culture plankton for photobioreactors or dyes and pigments from marine bacteria for example. Aquaculture is about more than just salmon
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Sampling Day which has taken place almost every year on 21st June since 2014, now Dr Pade plans to extend this work further. “We want to grow that into a permanent observatory, with bi-monthly sampling across 15 sites. We’re starting a pilot project now to essentially make this a long-term observatory, as a European contribution to global genomics-based biodiversity observation efforts,” he says. “This continuation of the genomics observatories is a legacy of the JRAs. We’ve found that this is something that’s really lacking – there are a lot of initiatives around that are doing excellent work, but we have an opportunity here to start providing long-term, baseline data. This is very important for supporting areas like biodiversity monitoring and microbiome research.”
Participating in Ocean Sampling Day (Photo: Bigelow Laboratory of Ocean Sciences, USA).
The Five Joint Research Activities (JRAs) Genomic observatories
A genomic observatory can be thought of as an eco-system or site subject to sustained genomics, genetics or DNA research, allowing scientists to monitor long-term changes. The ambition in this JRA is to pilot coordinated sampling events in certain marine eco-systems and gather large amounts of data, that can then be subjected to further analysis.
www.euresearcher.com
Cryobanking marine organisms
There is only limited capacity to conserve marine genetic and biological resources ex situ, while it is also difficult to preserve them in an unchanged state over the longer term, which in turn constrains efforts to exploit them. In this JRA, the aim is to develop robust, reproducible cryopreservation methodologies for various life-stages of a range of marine macro-organisms and microorganisms which are currently difficult to cryopreserve.
Functional genomics
Both systemic and smallscale approaches have an important role to play in the goal of establishing firmer links between the genomic information of marine organisms and their phenotype. The aim here is to implement functional genomics approaches such as CRISPR-Cas 9 for a panel of emerging marine model organisms, and where necessary to adapt those approaches.
Development of instrumentation
Experimental systems and novel systems, such as tidal simulation systems, standardized systems, and sustainable systems are often developed for a specific research proposal, after which they are abandoned, representing a waste of time and resources. The goal in this JRA is to encourage the development of standardised experimental systems.
Scientific Diving
Images from scientific diving can lead to new insights into marine organisms and habitats, yet currently there is a lack of standardised methodologies and common datasets. In this JRA, the key aims are to standardise the underwater application of photogrammetry “a photograph based survey technique” and develop an underwater observation network.
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ASSEMBLE Plus Association of European Marine Biological Laboratories Expanded
Project Objectives
The ASSEMBLE Plus partners kick-off meeting at Sorbonne Université, Paris, France.
Building on the success of its predecessor ASSEMBLE (2009-2014), the EU-funded ASSEMBLE Plus brings together key marine biological research institutes across Europe and overseas to ensure their optimal use and joint development. In particular, ASSEMBLE Plus provides expenses-paid Transnational Access to the ecosystems, marine organisms, and facilities available at its partner institutes.
EMBRC
Project Funding
Funded under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 730984.
Project Partners
There are a total of 24 partners from 16 different countries. • https://www.assembleplus.eu/about/consortium
Contact Details
Project Coordinator, Nicolas Pade EMBRC-ERIC 4 Place Jussieu - BC 93 75252 Paris Cedex 05 (FR) T: +33 1 44 27 63 37 E: nicolas.pade@embrc.eu W: https://www.assembleplus.eu/ W: https://ec.europa.eu/maritimeaffairs/ policy/blue_growth_en
Dr Nicolas Pade © Annie Gozard
Dr Nicolas Pade is the Project Coordinator of ASSEMBLE Plus and works as Executive Director of the European Marine Biological Resource Centre (EMBRC-ERIC). Dr Pade holds a PhD in Molecular and Spatial Ecology from the University of Aberdeen and has held positions at Sorbonne Université and The Marine Biological Association.
While ASSEMBLE Plus is nearing the end of its funding term, Dr Pade says the European Marine Biological Resource Centre (EMBRC), a research infrastructure, will continue to provide European researchers with access to marine biological organisms and certain habitats through the marine stations. EMBRC is the long-term panEuropean organisation that coordinates the Horizon 2020 funded ASSEMBLE Plus. “EMBRC has longevity in sustained funding, so we have a really good opportunity to enhance the legacy of the many projects that we’re involved in” explains Dr Pade. The aim in the future will be to develop new tools and offer new services and platforms to users of the EMBRC facilities, whilst also looking for opportunities for TA programmes. At the moment, scientists can apply to do virtually any type of research, but Dr Pade believes it is likely that future calls will be more targeted. “It could be that there will be calls for research on anti-microbial resistance, or bio-prospecting for medicines,” he says. However, EMBRC does not have a particularly large research and development budget, so Dr Pade says it will be important to establish strong links with other initiatives. “This is where we can work with other research infrastructures, to develop common services or pipelines of services, where people will use one research infrastructure to do one thing and then go on to use the output in another,” he outlines. “For example, people might come and isolate some strains from a marine environment, then take them on to one of the big microscopy platforms in Europe to do some more thorough analysis.” In addition, EMBRC can offer coordination and can continue the work of the JRAs. “We can help with coordination in terms of visibility, organisation, joint protocols, joint standards,
shared data standards, meta-data protocols,” he outlines. The EMBRC is also keen to engage with organisations in other parts of the world. “We are speaking to partners in Africa, Latin America, and Asia for example, while we’re also looking at the legacy of other JRAs, such as that on cryo-banking. We’ve done a lot of research, and developed methodologies and procedures – this knowledge will be spread within the EMBRC consortium,” continues Dr Pade. “The expertise that we’ve gained around cryo-preservation and cryo-banking will apply within EMBRC and we will continue to work on that. The same applied for all of the expected outputs from all of the JRAs.”
Networking Activities The research that is taking place within the ASSEMBLE Plus project holds wider interest to industry and academia, so a lot of emphasis is placed in the project on sharing knowledge and widening access to data. “We established some networking activities within the project’s design and are trying to connect scientists with the end-users, including some from industry. We want to heighten awareness of the results coming out of the project,” says Georgia Bayliss-Brown, the project’s Communications Officer. “This year, we held an online conference sharing the results of the project and engaging with the wider community. It was a great success, and we shall be hosting a further conference in 2022. In addition, we often host training and workshops within our many partner organisations that are free to attend. We announce these as they occur on our website and via our mailing list”. If you would like to find out more about the project, please visit www.assembleplus.eu or subscribe to the newsletter at HYPERLINK “http:// www.assembleplus.eu/newsroom/news”http:// www.assembleplus.eu/newsroom/news. Surveying the marine floors (Photos: Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Italy; The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel; University of Vigo, Spain).
Performing research across the globe (Photo: British Antarctic Survey).
Salt marsh area of Guadiana estuary, Photo: Carmen Santos, CCMAR.
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