With the genome sequencing of hundreds of bacterial isolates per day and a vast and growing number of metagenomic sequencing projects on gut microbiomes in healthy and diseased people all over the world, it becomes feasible to explore the microbial diversity in us not only at the level of genera and species, but at strains. As two different strains of a prokaryotic species might only share 40% of the genes and can also have vastly differ in single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) many aspects of a proper understanding of the microbial communities we host in the gut might only be revealed at this high resolution level. This proposal aims (i) to develop a robust methodology to characterize the SNP and gene content landscape from metagenomic shotgun data (ii) to explore patterns of variation in the human population to stratify geographically, but also in subpopulations such as families and to understand spreading patterns and the evolution of microbial strains as well as iii) to work towards medical applications, for example by monitoring fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) at strain resolution or monitoring particular strain of interest in the population

Humans are microbial, living in close functional interaction with their skin and mucosal microbiomes. Human-microbes interplay has proven essential for the maintenance of health and well-being and profiling of microbiomes will become an essential feature of the personalized preventive nutrition and medicine of tomorrow. Europe has gained a leading position in microbiome science and yet to fulfill societal expectations, an international consensus will be essential on key aspects. These include i) clinical trial design as well as analytical standards, ii) definitions of healthy microbiomes as a function of numerous factors, accounting for confounders, iii) means of demonstrating causality of altered host-microbes interactions in diseases and iv) processes for the development of clinically relevant, validated biomarkers. The International Human Microbiome Concertation and Support Action (IHMCSA) will tackle all necessary steps to open the perspective of managing nutrition and health of the microbial human. Involving key stakeholders representing the multiplicity of actors concerned, including citizens, IHMCSA will map existing material, delineate necessary steps and pathways for innovation and build consensus on priorities and means for the future of microbiome science and its translation. This will lead to recommendations, validated by an international Strategic Steering Committee as well as academies of medicine of the world, directed to the European Commission, international research programmes, funding and regulatory agencies and decision makers of health systems. To ensure sustainability of the proposed measures, IHMCSA will promote unified repositories for sharing standards, SOPs and data, and contribute to the structuration of the European Microbiome Centers Consortium with a role in gathering world microbiome networks of excellence. With IHMCSA, human-associated microbiomes will be recognized for their true value in contributing to secure the future of mankind.

The ocean and its biodiversity are essential to life on this planet. Comprehensive data on biodiversity, and related human and environmental pressures are crucial to understand its current state and how this may change. Protecting and restoring biodiversity is one of three objectives of the Horizon Europe Mission to restore our oceans and waters by 2030, enabling the EU to reach its Green Deal and Biodiversity 2030 targets. Identified as one of the Mission "enablers", the EU will build on “a digital knowledge system” to include a Digital Twin of the Ocean (DTO) allowing simulation of ‘what if’ scenarios, advancing ocean knowledge, informing evidence-based policy and offering a range of societal applications. To effectively replicate the ocean’s ecology, the DTO requires sustained flows of data on biodiversity and associated pressures. Despite myriad actors collecting biodiversity data, and the development of novel cost-effective monitoring technologies, much of these data are inaccessible or unusable for a variety of reasons, hampering the development of the DTO biological component and limiting its efficacy. DTO-BioFlow will activate access to ("sleeping") marine biodiversity data and enable the sustainable integration of existing and new Artificial Intelligence processed and automated data flows from various sources to EMODnet and into the EDITO infrastructure serving the EU DTO. Combining sustained data flows, models and new algorithms, DTO-BioFlow will develop and integrate the biological component of the DTO, including new digital tools and services. Policy-relevant use cases, will demonstrate the benefit for marine ecosystems of continuous data streams flowing through EMODnet and usable by the EU DTO infrastructures and ultimate end-users. Mobilising the marine biodiversity community towards increasing the availability of biodiversity monitoring data into 2030, DTO-BioFlow and its outputs will support the Mission’s actions to protect and restore biodiversity.

OpenAIRE2020 represents a pivotal phase in the long-term effort to implement and strengthen the impact of the Open Access (OA) policies of the European Commission (EC), building on the achievements of the OpenAIRE projects. OpenAIRE2020 will expand and leverage its focus from (1) the agents and resources of scholarly communication to workflows and processes, (2) from publications to data, software, and other research outputs, and the links between them, and (3) strengthen the relationship of European OA infrastructures with other regions of the world, in particular Latin America and the U.S. Through these efforts OpenAIRE2020 will truly support and accelerate Open Science and Scholarship, of which Open Access is of fundamental importance. OpenAIRE2020 continues and extends OpenAIRE’s scholarly communication infrastructure to manage and monitor the outcomes of EC-funded research. It combines its substantial networking capacities and technical capabilities to deliver a robust infrastructure offering support for the Open Access policies in Horizon 2020, via a range of pan-European outreach activities and a suite of services for key stakeholders. It provides researcher support and services for the Open Data Pilot and investigates its legal ramifications. The project offers to national funders the ability to implement OpenAIRE services to monitor research output, whilst new impact measures for research are investigated. OpenAIRE2020 engages with innovative publishing and data initiatives via studies and pilots. By liaising with global infrastructures, it ensures international interoperability of repositories and their valuable OA contents. To ensure sustainability and long-term health for the overall OpenAIRE infrastructure, the proposed OpenAIRE2020 project will establish itself as a legal entity, which will manage the production-level responsibilities securing 24/7 reliability and continuity to all relevant user groups, data providers and other stakeholders.