ExpectedOutcome:
A successful proposal will contribute to all Destination ‘Zero pollution’ and in particular impacts related to enhancing circular bio-based systems to operate according to planetary boundaries, replacing fossil-based systems and their carbon footprint, mitigating climate change, restoring biodiversity and protecting air, water and soil quality along supply chain of biological feedstock and industrial value chains within the EU and Associated Countries and across borders. Furthermore, it will contribute to substitute harmful chemicals by safer and more sustainable alternatives notably by boosting innovative biotechnology and other sustainable technologies to create zero-pollution bio-based solutions.
Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following outcomes:
- Improving the quality of environment (water, soil and air) by stepping up the reliable monitoring and detection, of any biotic or abiotic pollutants, by developing practical, specific, adaptable and economic tools, based on bio-based principles, for the use of consumers, inspection services and industry operators alike. This can cover the use at industrial locations, but also at ecological disaster- or accidents’ sites, or at home applications;
- Contributing to the zero-pollution objective of the European Green Deal and to the European Missions such as one on ‘Restoring our ocean and waters by 2030’ or ‘A Soil Deal for Europe’ by up-scaling the application of modern biosensors underpinned by the biotechnology, across a variety of ecosystems, including marine and freshwater or soil ecosystems and real-life conditions impacted by the pollution issues;
- Increasing engagement and competitiveness of the European environmental services sector, such as the SMEs and industry operators, including the digital sector actors, supporting the convergence between bio-based and digital sectors (including the role of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions). Increasing the awareness and understanding of the underpinning technologies by the civil society, including NGOs and consumer organisations, as well as participatory approaches such as citizen engagement, including citizen science, in environmental observation and monitoring.
Scope:
The scope covers the development of high-resolution biosensors for environmental monitoring and detection. The focus is on:
- (1) large scale synthesis of biosensor variants, across kingdoms (from bacteria/archaea to plants);
- (2) improved biosensor/genetic circuit designs for a multitude of sensor inputs, integrating modified microorganism (elements) with transduction/detection systems enabling to relay the information to the user, while guaranteeing environmental safety, especially related to any risk of potential release of such microorganisms into open environment, if relevant;
- (3) develop protein-based (RNA) biosensors to detect and measure metabolites and organisms of interest;
- (4) create organisms that can act as multiplexing sensors capable of canalizing multiple environmental cues and providing measurable responses or combination of responses that may be deconvoluted to determine stimuli, while guaranteeing environmental safety, especially related to any risk of potential release of such organisms into open environment;
- (5) build more extensive and fully-sequenced metagenomics databases/libraries to enable searches for diverse functionalities across multiple gene clusters; and
- (6) better enable real-time data feeds.
The end-users targeted include consumers but also inspection services and the industry operators, as well as environmental emergency responders. Communication and inclusive participation form an essential part of the proposals. All environmental conditions and ecosystems (water, soil, air etc), may be covered.
Concrete efforts shall be made to ensure that the data produced in the context of this project is FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable), particularly in the context of real-time data feeds, exploring workflows that can provide “FAIR-by-design” data, i.e., data that is FAIR from its generation. Projects shall further build on, and widen, the data availability in European Research Infrastructures federated under the European Open Science Cloud.
To respect the ‘Do-No-Significant-Harm’ (DNSH) principle, proposals using any alive organisms need to properly assess and exclude any potential risk of their release to open environment.
The projects funded under this topic may:
- build links with the European Mission ‘Restore our ocean and waters by 2030’ or Soil Mission, in particular as regards stepping up the monitoring of ecosystems and their biodiversity;
- build links with Missions implementation monitoring system;
- build links and support the Missions knowledge and information system, in particular by contributing to pollution monitoring, modelling and knowledge creation and data.
In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.
Proposals should include a dedicated task, appropriate resources and a plan on how they will collaborate with other projects funded under this topic and other relevant topics.
Specific Topic Conditions:
Activities are expected to achieve TRL 3-5 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.
