Flanders Reseach Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food hosting offers for MSCA-IF postdoc fellowships in Marine Science

MSCA postdoc fellowship hosting offers for 2021 call

The Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (ILVO) is a public research institute located in Belgium. ILVO performs multidisciplinary, innovative and independent research aimed at economically, ecologically and socially sustainable agriculture and fisheries. Through this research, ILVO accumulates fundamental and applied knowledge which is vital for the improvement of products and production methods, for quality control and the safety of end products, and for the amelioration of policy instruments as a foundation for sector development and agricultural policy for rural areas.

Recently, some important management decisions have been made to orientate the research at ILVO in a holistic framework of systems thinking as well as to combine ILVO's tacit knowledge with new technological approaches like genomics, metabolomics, (remote) sensing technology, artificial intelligence, precision farming, innovative food/feed production technology, new breeding technologies, animal models, modelling as well as participatory social sciences approaches. This means that a lot of the research at ILVO is conducted in Living Labs, such as a Food Pilot, fishing vessels, modern greenhouses and animal farming units, and in the context of inter- and transdisciplinary research. To accelerate and further improve this new research process, ILVO is looking to host young and experienced researchers at post-doc level in the framework of Marie Sklodowska-Curie individual fellowships within the new Horizon Europe framework programmaoriHor.

Possible research items are shown below and are divided over the different research units of ILVO. Please contact the respective contact persons if you are interested in a specific item or research unit.

Marine Sciences

General contact for marine sciences: Hans Polet (hans.polet@ilvo.vlaanderen.be)

*Marine algae as a source of high value products: valorization of mycosporine-like amino acids

Diverse marine species, including many macro- and micro-algae species, are able to produce mycosporine-like amino acids (MAAs). These molecules are mostly imine derivatives of mycosporins which contain an amino-cyclohexenimine ring linked to an amino acid, amino alcohol or amino group. MAAs are produced by algae to protect themselves against ultraviolet radiation from sunshine and oxidative stress. Therefore, MAAs have an enormous valorisation potential to use as sunscreen agents, pharmaceutical agents, anti-cancer agents, anti-photoaging molecules, activators of cell proliferation and stimulators of skin healing. In addition, these MAAs might be used in industrial applications, such as packaging materials or coatings to avoid weathering.

This postdoc research aims to valorize the potential of these MAAs by focusing on the analysis, extraction and production of MAAs from selected algae species, in order to maximize MAAs production. For this, divers approaches will be developed. By changing environmental conditions and stress factors, optimal breeding conditions will be selected and applied. More advanced molecular approaches for metabolic engineering (i.e. CRISPR/Cas) will be used to steer metabolic pathways to increase MAA production. Production of MAAs will be monitored via LC-HRMS. A testing facility will be set up to assess both pharmaceutical and industrial features and to explore the potential for other applications.

At ILVO, the infrastructure and analytical instrumentation is present to efficiently breed macro- and microalgae, and to analyze MAAs, and experience with CRISPR/Cas is available through several other projects.

Contact: Johan.Robbens@ilvo.vlaanderen.be; Johan.Vanhuylenbroeck@ilvo.vlaanderen.be