Welcome

 From the Sea to Industrial Products. Designed by A.R. Uria on Sept 2008. Please click the `cross` (x) on the right corner to continue seeing slides

As we know, oceans cover more than 70% of the Earth, and appear to host 32 out of the discovered 34 phyla on Earth.  The extraordinary biodiversity of oceans offers big opportunities and challenges for discovery of new genes, enzymes, and secondary metabolites which might be useful from both scientific and industrial perspectives (e.g. foods, cosmetics, nutrieceuticals, and biomedicines). So far over 14.000 new biologically active compounds have been identified from marine sources. At least 300 patents have been issued on marine natural products (Hunt & Vincent, 2006), and more than 37 patents from the deep sea products were registered in the USA and Europe, as reported by the Postnote (2007). 

Recent advances in Marine Biotechnology offer ecologically and environmentally sound approaches in  the exploration of marine biodiversity. One of the powerful biotechnological innovations is  Metagenomics, a rapidly emerging new approach for discovery of useful bioproducts from the uncultured microbial world. However, conversion of bioproducts from the sea into the market or industrial level is lenghty, scientifically complicated and expensive. It therefore requires a close collaboration among scientists, biotech companies, and biodiversity-controlling agency representing the source country and the local society.

This personal website provides a few recent information on Marine Biotechnology especially related to my current work  and past research works. This includes the rapidly emerging new approach, Marine Metagenomics. Please click the main menu for details. Should be any comment or feedback, please feel free to contact me:

Agus