Diversity, Emergence and Ecosystems, Synthetic Biology of Microbes

The world faces interconnected climate, environmental, and health challenges, due to rising emissions, pollution, and biodiversity loss. Socio-economic actors must adopt sustainable practices, particularly in bioenergy and biotechnology, because they can reduce fossil fuel dependence and pollutions, under the condition of being environmentally and economically sound. Balancing these needs requires coordinated interdisciplinary and intersectoral efforts integrating fundamental science, policies, and local actions. Local, national and international enterprises settled in France's Provence-Alpes-Côte-Azur (PACA) region are at the forefront of this green transition investing in renewable energy, biotechnologies and research initiatives. The Microbio-SEED program will foster the PACA region for these challenges, specifically via 3 thematic cross-cutting research axes corresponding to major challenges in bioenergy and biotechnology and reflects the strengths of AMU, A*MIDEX and IM2B in research and innovation: - Diversity – exploring the bacterial, viral, algal and fungal biodiversity, its resilience and its adaptation to changes - Emergence and Ecosystems – Decoding the emergence of multicellularity, and understanding the cellular interactions to unravel the general functioning of ecosystems - Synthetic Biology: Manipulating cellular functions and engineering innovative biological models We will respond to the current challenges in modern microbiology regarding bioenergies, adaptation to environmental changes, and health concerns caused by micro-organisms. The Microbio-SEED program sought to recruit 10 experienced researchers for 36-month projects, selected through a rigorous, transparent, open and merit-based selection process. The Microbio-SEED program will develop an interdisciplinarity, intersectorality and internationality strategy to both answer key questions in bioenergy and biotechnology and to increase the career opportunities of ERs in academia and companies.