Exploring the spore forming diversity for new food process opportunities – SporeBiotech

The food and the agriculture lie at the heart of the FAO 2030 Agenda to end poverty and hunger and achieve sustainable development. In this perspective, microorganisms can play a major role, for example, as biocontrol agent they may help in reducing the use of disinfectant in the food industry. The “SporeBiotech” project aims to implement an endospore-forming bacteria discovery pipeline. This approach will allow to better understand the endospore forming bacteria diversity in their habitats and to select potential biotechnological candidates. To this aim, the bacterial collection will be characterized for different bioactivities (antibacterial, anti-adhesion, competitive exclusion, quorum quenching) that may play key roles to prevent and/or remove biofilm. At last, isolates will be characterized for toxicity against CaCo2 cells and the most promising isolates will be selected by statistical analysis. Selected strains will then be characterized for their behaviour (growth and resistance) and their genome will be sequenced. The global project will allow to offer a characterized potential biocontrol collection.