Anaerobic bacteria, a group of microorganisms that thrive in the absence of oxygen, have a significant impact on the quality of life on Earth. They play a crucial role in biotechnology and are essential components of the gut microbiota. As such, they are of tremendous importance for human, animal, and environmental health. On the other hand, certain anaerobes can be life-threatening pathogens. In light of this, there is an urgent need for a deeper understanding of the specialized metabolites of anaerobes, which could function as chemical mediators, virulence factors, and antibiotics. Although genome analyses indicate that anaerobic bacteria hold an enormous potential for producing structurally unique compounds, biosynthetic gene clusters are typically downregulated or silent under laboratory conditions. Synthetic biology approaches to unearth these cryptic pathways have been hampered by the lack of universal activation strategies, the cumbersome genetic tractability of anaerobes, and the incompatibility of standard expression systems with the oxygen-sensitive biosynthetic enzymes. The AnoxyGen project seeks to unearth the vast structural wealth of natural products from the anaerobic world and leverage their unique biosynthetic machinery using a highly versatile anaerobic expression platform. This ambitious initiative comprises four work packages aimed at refining synthetic biology tools, creating gain-of-function anaerobes, discovering novel drug candidates and virulence factors, and engineering biosynthetic pathways to create metabolic diversity. By achieving these objectives, AnoxyGen will grant a comprehensive overview on specialized metabolites and biocatalysts of anaerobes, which have great translational value for medicine, ecology, and biotechnology. In addition to providing valuable methods and tools to the scientific community, this project has the potential to bring significant benefits for the health and well-being of people, animals, and the environment.

BestTreat fosters education of ESRs in a project to uncover microbiome signatures for risk prediction and monitoring of NAFLD and to contribute to the development of therapeutic treatments based on metabolically beneficial microbial consortia. It trains 15 ESRs at world-leading academic institutions and companies, thus forming strong interdisciplinary links between industry, life and medical sciences, and end-users. BestTreat aims to train a new generation of highly qualified ESRs with entrepreneurial competencies in modern Life Sciences through state-of-the-art research projects. The projects focus on the identification and functional characterization of microbial consortia that contribute to metabolic control, and the application of this knowledge to develop novel leads for drug discovery and therapies for NAFLD. The new field on microbiome based therapeutics requires highly skilled scientists with interdisciplinary knowledge on medicine, systems biology and computer science, as well as hands-on experience with several types of tissue samples and model organisms that can optimally translate their research findings into sustainable improvements in clinical practice. BestTreat overcomes current barriers by establishing a strong, multidisciplinary and inter-sectoral training network, developing technologies tailored to solve key questions in human metabolism, microbiology and bioinformatics. The BestTreat programme will exploit recent developments in high-throughput and genome-wide screening technologies, combine these with modern molecular cell biology and systems biology approaches and ultimately translate the data into new leads for the discovery of live biotherapeutics. This specific cross-disciplinary training program will educate young scientists to the next level needed to advance this research field for the upcoming decennium. The training programme will be complemented with a complete set of transferable skills.