INMARE, a four-year European research project that brought together industrial and academic partners, aims to transform the enzyme biodiscovery process and isolate new enzymes from the ocean. Enzymes make industrial processes faster, cleaner and safer and cheaper.
Overall, INMARE has three goals:
- to develop a smoothly functioning consortium combining research-excellent academic partners with industrial market players;
- to shorten & streamline the industrial enzyme pipeline by increasing the value of enzyme collections;
- to identify new lead products and prototypes during the projects lifetime.
According to the video, enzymes are used by many industries, including:
- Food;
- Agriculture;
- Cosmetic;
- Pharmaceutical.
However, modern day problems, as overpopulation, diminishing natural resources and human health, have ignited the quest for more sustainable and cleaner industrial processes and products.
Thus, now there’s a need for new industrially useful enzymes.
As Dr Charlotte Blom, Department Manager, Novozymes, commented
We need new enzymes because we need more sustainable solutions for our world that is growing and where we are spending our resources in a way where it can not continue like this.
The research aims to find and produce byproducts that will be the commodities for the future, that will serve for the future.
The only challenge is that a very small percentage of new enzymes are useful in industrial processes. Thus, INMARE decided to find new enzymes from microorganisms that live in the ocean, because these enzymes are already adapted to working difficult environmental conditions, and it might be the same for the enzymes to perform in industrial conditions.
