The Kluyver Centre, a Dutch industry and government consortium using microbial genomics to improve industrial fermentation processes, has extended its collaboration with Genedata, covering the use of the latter's suite of bioinformatics products. The Genedata Phylosopher biological data management platform and the Genedata Expressionist biomarker discovery platform will support central data storage and provide automated workflows to integrate transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomic data for the centre's academic and industrial research partners.
'We are able to pool genomics expertise across the entire Kluyver Centre network using Genedata's standardised and integrated informatics platform,' explained Professor Han De Winde, business director of the Kluyver Centre. 'Our research focuses on the development of a complete systems biology workflow, which is aimed at enhancing fermentation in yeast, filamentous fungi or lactic acid bacteria. It also involves sequencing, genome-wide functional studies as well as strain and process design. We needed a research informatics partner able to support our full workflow and Genedata solutions are a perfect fit.'
The Kluyver Centre, a private-public partnership between fermentation experts from industry and academia, focuses on the highly innovative industrial systems biotechnology sector and includes microbial genomics, metabolic engineering, and bio-transformation programs. Part of the Netherlands Genomics Initiative, the Kluyver Centre develops sustainable and environmentally friendly production methods through fermentation of renewable feedstock, feed and feed ingredients, pharmaceutical compounds, and nutraceuticals.
'We are routinely applying various high-throughput omics technologies and use Genedata software for making sense of the huge data volumes produced by these technologies,' said Professor Jack Pronk, scientific director of the Kluyver Centre. 'Another great advantage of the Genedata software is that it supports emerging technologies such as next generation sequencing for in-depth transcriptome analysis, which is used for gene model refinement and re-sequencing-guided optimisation campaigns of industrial production strains.'
