IFREMER, France

IFREMER is a French institute that undertakes research and expert assessments to advance knowledge on the oceans and their resources, monitor the marine environment and foster the sustainable development of maritime activities. Through a systemic approach, Ifremer plays a part in marine environmental observation on all scales and in understanding ecosystems, the processes governing them and the services they help provide, in a context of global change. Ifremer designs and deploys infrastructures for marine research and monitoring and tools for observation and experimentation, and manages databases. It operates a significant part of the French oceanographic fleet on behalf of the entire scientific community.

Few figures on Ifremer:

• Annual budget of nearly 200 million euros
• Personnel: 1 478
• 5 research centres and 20 coastal locations along the entire coastline of metropolitan France and in French overseas territories
• 6 vessels, 1 manned submersible, 2 remotely-operated vehicles for deep sea explorations, 2 autonomous underwater vehicles and a full set of test facilities

The laboratory of Microbial Ecosystem and Marine Molecules for Biotechnology (EM3B) includes 18 staff members and several PH-D and post-doc students.

The main goals of EM3B are to :

1. Study the (co)evolution of microbial communities in seafood products, their interaction and the incidence on quality and safety of seafood products (fish, crustacean).

2. Study the bacterial metabolites, their biosynthesis and the opportunity for innovation.

EM3B owns and periodically enriches unique collections of deep-sea and seafood bacteria (5 000 isolates). It conducts research for exploitation and promotion of those bacteria and their biomolecules (antimicrobial compounds, exopolysaccharides, enzymes) for application in human (sea)food, health, cosmetics, environment...

Within the first axis of our activity, EM3B is expert in:

- Bacterial ecosystems in seafood products (cultural and New Generation Sequencing)

- Correlation with sensory analysis (internal expert panel) and volatile compounds

- Bacterial interaction within populations and incidence on seafood quality

- Biopreservation of seafood, including (i) High-throughput selection of bacterial strains with an antagonist activity against pathogens and spoiling microorganisms, (ii) bioanalysis of whole genome, (iii) safety assessment of protective strains and (iv) application in seafood.

- Cell-to-cell mechanism of action

Some of our bacterial strains are licenced to the industry.