Category: Our Events

On April 2021, from 7^th to 9^th, the UAlg team organized a workshop entitled “Workshop on reproductive biotechnology and cryobanking in aquatic species”. It was hold in Faro, Portugal, where several ponents from diverse institutions gave very interesting lectures about reproductive and cryopreservation techniques via zoom platform. Dr. Elsa Cabrita and her team were in charge of moderating the event and also conducted the practical sessions.

Among the invited speakers there were several researchers involved in EBB. Dr. Ibon Cancio, from PiE-UPV/EHU, gave a talk entitled “Biobanking and marine culture collections: access and benefit sharing obligations in the utilisation of genetic resources”. In it he explained the main aspects of ABS regulations and how these can affect access to marine biological resources. And, Dr. Estefanía Paredes, from the CIM-UVigo, gave a talk entitled “Cryopreservation in molluscs & echinoderms”, in which she explained the main aspects of the conservation of these organisms. In addition, Dr. Paredes presented the “Video-Session V: Laser techniques for thawing embryos”, where the latest techniques for the recovery of frozen samples were shown in a visual way.

Apart from this, the day 9^th was the practical training day of the workshop where a total of 20 people attended these training classes, which consisted on a visit to zebrafish facilities, sperm collection from seabream and Portuguese oyster, and cryopreservation of these samples using several methods. Besides, testicular dissection and spermatogonia collection were performed including cryopreservation of these cells for conducting transplantations in the future.

Overall, this workshop helped to disseminate some of main aspects of the project and contributed to the capitalization of the project.

After more than three years of work, the project celebrated, this last Tuesday, March 23, its closing event: the “Symposium on Biobanking and Marine Diversity”. The event gathered around 100 people from all over the world interested in EBB results and main outcomes.

The Director of the Marine Research Center (CIM) of the University of Vigo, Daniel Rey, opened the symposium and showcased the importance of the European Blue Biobank project for the European marine stations and for the European Marine Biological Resource Centre (EMBRC) community. The CIM’s Director also complimented EBB partners for all the effort made during the project implementation, highlighting that this effort was recognized by the Atlantic Area Awards during the 5ª Atlantic Stakeholder Platform Conference, held in 2018.

Then, Jesús Souza Troncoso, EBB project’s leader at University of Vigo, gave special thanks to all the people involved in the project from its drafting to the present time.

The presentations sessions started with Fiz da Costa, project manager of EBB project, who focused on the legacy that the project leaves to the EMBRC community and to the entire marine science community. He showed, in a schematic way, the main results obtained in this project that will remain operational over time and will serve to improve the quality of marine stations, biobanks, culture collections and marine science researchers. His speech also served as an introduction of the main topics that were presented during the symposium.

The EMBRC Executive Director, Nicolas Pade, followed presenting EMBRC-ERIC and showing the main goals of this research infrastructure with special focus on the services provided. He also explained the important role of EMBRC (and its biological resources centers) in helping research to carry out their “due diligence” regarding Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) legislation.

This last point served as a springboard for one of the project’s main achievements: the creation of a best practices manual to comply with the ABS by EBB project, that has been also endorsed by EMBRC. This manual, entitled “The EMBRC guide to ABS compliance. Recommendations to marine biological resources collections’ and users’ institutions”, was presented by Anne Emmanuelle Kervella and Heidi Tillin from CNRS-Station Biologique de Roscoff and Marine Biological Association, respectively. Anne-Emmanuelle made a presentation introducing the main aspects of ABS regulations and the Nagoya Protocol. Then, Heidi Tillin, presented the structure of the EMBRC guide and focused on one of the technical annexes.

Heidi Tillin also presented the practical guide for users “Seek, keep & transfer: A step-by-step guide to ABS compliance when utilizing marine genetic resources”. This useful document provides end-users with the necessary information and steps for ABS compliance in their access to genetic resources.

After, Amber Scholz, from the DMSZ German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures, explained to the audience the advantages and drawbacks for DMSZ collection of registering in the European register of collections.

The last talk was given by Ian Probert, manager of the Roscoff Culture Collecion, who presented the management tools TRACK and TRACE. TRACK is a web-based database tool to manage data pertaining to marine biological resources provided from biobanks. TRACE, on the other hand, is a common online catalogue of marine biological resources available from EBB partners, which includes resources from culture collections, cultured macroorganisms, sample collections and wild-collected resources.

The event finished with Fiz  thanking all EBB members for their contribution during the years to the success of the project, the participants to the event for attending and the organization.

The recording of the event is now available on the UvigoTV channel.

Last Friday, January 29, as part of the agenda of Assemble Plus 2021 Conference, members of the EBB project, together with the ABS Working group of EMBRC, organized and held an online event where the main outputs and results of the EBB project were launched.

The EMBRC Executive Director, Nicolas Pade, introduced the workshop and its objectives. He explained the role of Biological Resources Centres (BRCs) in helping researchers to carry out their “due diligence” regarding Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) legislation. He also presented the work that EMBRC is doing to bring its BRCs up to date and in compliance with ABS regulations. Finally, he presented the members of the ABS Working group of EMBRC.

The first part of the workshop was dedicated to present two outputs developed in the frame of the EBB project.  Anne Emmanuelle Kervella, from CNRS and Station Biologique de Roscoff, presented “The EBB | EMBRC guide to ABS compliance”, which provides recommendations to institutions with collections and users of marine biological resources to comply with the ABS legislation. She briefly introduced the Nagoya Protocol, the European ABS Regulation and the marine genetic resources in scope of these regulations. She highlighted that the implementation of all the requirements in institutions and biobanks produce an impact on the activities, policies and organization of the research institutions. Then, she provided an overview of the structure and main contents included in “The EBB | EMBRC guide to ABS compliance”.

Then, Ian Probert, from the Station Biologique de Roscoff, presented a step-by-step guide which is a practical to-do-list for individual scientists from academia or private sector conducting research on “marine genetic resources”. This document recommends users to follow a 6-step iterative process by answering some questions in an iterative way. The guide presents action and provides tips for each of the 6 steps.

A round of question-answers followed these presentations to close the first part of the workshop.

The second part of the workshop was dedicated to showcase research projects that have taken into practice the indications appearing in the EBB/EMBRC guide to ABS compliance. First, Arnaud Larroquette, EMBRC ABS Compliance Officer, started a round table entitled “How to take all this into practice”, showing the results of an audit of the genetic resources held in EBB collections.

Then, three use cases of users of services and resources at marine biological stations were presented. Christian Galasso (Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn), Daniel García Souto (CiMUS, University of Santiago de Compostela) and Fernando Reyes (Fundación Medina) shared their experiences as users of marine genetic resources from different European countries. The three short presentations were followed by a section with questions and answers, with participation of researchers, managers of research institutions and even ABS national focal point representatives.

Fiz da Costa from ECIMAT-Marine Research Center of the University of Vigo and Ibon Cancio from PiE-UPV/EHU of the University of Basque Country were the moderators of this successful event, with participation of more than 70 persons of different nationalities.

The video recording of this event is available on the EMBRC YouTube channel at this link.

On the 12^th of November 2020, our colleague and EBB partner Heidi Tillin, from the Marine Biological Association (MBA), gave a virtual talk on the “Coffee Time Talk” seminar series organized by MBA about the Nagoya Protocol entitled: “Research & Biopiracy: An Intro to Nagoya Protocol & European Access & Benefit Sharing Regulations”.

She briefly introduced the legislative background of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Nagoya Protocol. Then, she explained what is Access and Benefit Sharing and the obligations imposed on the users of genetic resources or traditional knowledge in the European Union by the EU REG511/2014. She also showed to the audience the ABS Clearing House and how it can help final users to comply with the regulations associated with the Nagoya Protocol.

After this introduction, she focused on marine collections, and what are the requirements that the collections needs to demonstrate to become an EU registered collection. According to this, she explained that many organizations have developed guidelines for improving their practices. She exposed the advances made in the frame of EBB project and that a Handbook on implementation of Best Practices focused on biobanks and collections has been developed. This new document, created under the umbrella of EMBRC and its ABS working group, is divided in two parts: the first one introduces the legal framework and the second one includes technical guidelines and some useful annexes for their implementation.

The recording of the presentation is available here.

The 10^th edition of Business2Sea organized by CETMAR Foundation and Fórum Oceano was held from the 16^th to 20^th of November 2020 in virtual format. The European Blue Biobank (EBB) project contributed to this event with an awareness workshop entitled “Do not be a biopirate: the European Blue biobank can help you use marine genetic resources legally”. Belén Martín Míguez, EBB coordinator, animated the workshop and Dr. Ibon Cancio from UPV/EHU (Spain) gave a first clarifying talk about how the importance of the Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) framework and Nagoya protocol for the conservation of global biodiversity, and the procedures that a user of marine genetic resources have to undertake for accessing them legally. Since regulations can differ between countries, Dr. Cancio showed in his presentation the central role of the Access and Benefit Sharing Clearing House (ABS-CH), a repository that facilitates the contact with the national focal points as well as pointing to the legal texts applicable in each country. Next, Fiz da Costa (CIM/UVigo, Spain), project manager of EBB project explained how the project had assisted more than 30 users to access marine genetic resources legally. Each use case has had its particularities: different provider country, different national regulations, different purpose of the experiments… Dr. da Costa finished his talk explaining the main lessons learnt from these use cases. A round table closed the workshop with users of genetic resources from different countries (Portugal, France and Spain) sharing their experiences in accessing and utilizing marine genetic resources. They highlighted some of the difficulties encountered and acknowledged EBB project contribution in helping them.

According to the polls launched during the workshop, half of the audience belonged to clusters/private sector and the other half to academic sector. The majority of the audience was not familiarized with all the steps needed for ABS compliance.

The presentations and videos of the workshop can be found here.

EBB partnership met virtually during three days, on 8^th, 27^th and 28^th October, to take stock of the progress made in the last year and plan the next and final actions before the project finishes on 15^th April.

They were intense sessions, where reporting on work packages was followed by short presentations by the partners.

Many new deliverables, finalised or closed to be in their final form were presented: amongst them, 1) an on-line EBB catalogue, a centralised gateway that will provide access to culture collections and biobanks held at EBB institutions; 2) the Handbook on implementation of EBB Best Practices; 3) a Step-by-Step guide on ABS compliance for commercial users, a report on the EBB Use Cases… the list goes on and the next months will be focused on the capitalization of all those outputs, making sure they are uptaken by other initiatives or projects.

During the General Assembly, the legacy of the project was also discussed, in particular, with regard to the European Marine Biological Resource Centre, EMBRC, under which EBB project is running. EMBRC will be the main depository of the main outputs. In particular, the Handbook on implementation of EBB Best Practices has already been endorsed by EMBRC, and in the future it will be submitted to be part of the EU Registry of Best Practices. The EBB online catalogue will eventually become an EMBRC catalogue for collections and biobanks from EMBRC members all over Europe.

In addition to EBB partners directly contributing to the project, the General Assembly counted on a number of guests from reputed institutions such as SANGER Welcome and the Scottish Association of Marine Science. EMBRC was also represented by its executive director Nicolas Pade, and its ABS officer, Arnaud Laroquette.

You can find the agenda of the Assembly here.

A virtual Quality Management Systems (QMS) training workshop for culture collections and biobanks from EBB partnership took place last week in the framework of WP4 (“Development of common methodologies for the management of Marine Biobanks”). The training had 6 participants from three EBB partners (CIIMAR, NUIG and UPV/EHU) involved in managing collections in their respective institutions, and 2 trainers from the University of Sorbonne (Priscillia Gourvil, Roscoff marine station) and University of Vigo (Sergio González, ECIMAT marine station), who are the QMS managers at their respective stations.

The training was hosted and organised by the University of Vigo (EBB lead partner) with Belén Martín Míguez (EBB coordinator) acting as facilitator. It ran over three days structured into ‘wake-up talks’ followed by lectures on QMS matters and hands-on activities. Topics covered during the lectures included “Fundamentals of QMS”, “QMS requirements for culture collections and biobanks” and “QMS documentation”. Additional topics of interest for the management of the collections like the Nagoya protocol or Cryopreservation techniques were also presented by Fiz da Costa and Estefanía Paredes respectively. The hands-on activities allowed the participants to consolidate and put in practice the concepts acquired during the lectures with the support of the trainers.

Overall, the training was highly informative for the participants, and fostered the exchange of experiences and ideas in a relaxed atmosphere. The participants will be initiating a QMS implementation process for their respective collections and biobanks in the next months, and they can count on the advice and support of EBB QMS trainers to guide them through the process.

EBB is a project that operates under the umbrella of EMBRC (European Marine Biological Resource Centre) research infrastructure and the results of this training will be a contribution to it.

The Plentzia Marine Station in the University of the Basque Country (PiE-UPV/EHU) hosted the 3^rd general assembly of the EBB project with a first day meeting on the Plentzia Marine Station in Plentzia and a second day in the “Bizkaia Aretoa” of the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao. The advances within each work package were discussed and way ahead during the last year of the project decided.

Within the assembly we hosted the Mini-workshop on EBB Quality Management Systems and a discussion on ABS Best practice guidelines in which Anne Nivart of CETAF and the French national Natural History Musseum and Juan Luis Gomez Pinchetti of the Spanish Algae Bank participated as invited experts.

The meeting was reflected in a short publication in the magazine Europa Azul:

Agentes se reúnen en el País Vasco para coordinar el Biobanco Marino Europeo

Belén Martín Míguez, coordinator of EBB project, together with Maria José Chapela, coordinator of Enhance Microalgae project (both Interreg Atlantic Area), organised the workshop “Fostering development of micro-algalbased industries: legal and practical aspects” which was part of the event Business2Sea that gathers annually stakeholders from the marine realm. The workshop firsrconsidered legal frameworks that can hinder exploitation of micro-algae. In particular, Fiz da Costa, from EBB project offered a talk on Nagoya protocol implementation. In the second part, two representatives from Neoalgae and A4f companies presented their activities and perspectives on those legal frameworks and how they impact their businesses. The audience (which included some other members of EBB project such as Vitor Vasconcelos and Guilherme Scotta from CIIMAR) participated in the debate.