Webinar on genome-scale modelling for consortia design

Published: May 28, 2024 by FME Lab

Last Tuesday 28th of May, Elham Karimi, Stephane Chaillou (Micalis, Food Microbial Ecology research group) and Valentin Loux (MaIAge) have organised in the frame of the #DominoEU project a webinar training session on genome-scale modelling (GSM).

This training aimed at performing the first cross-capacity building between two workpackages (WP3: Open access databases & computational tools) and (WP4: design of microbial consortia for sustainable plant-based fermented foods) and towards scientists from various background. GSM will be used in #DominoEU project for the design of microbial solution for various plant-based fermented food. Metagenomic and genomic data from samples and strains isolated at the beginning of the project will be used as template for this very challenging but exciting modelling. Next steps will be the GSM workshop 24-26th of June in INRAE Jouy-en-Josas.

Special thanks to the participants: Pascal Bonnarme, Vincent Hervé, Ayité Adama, Sophie Schbath (INRAE) ; Ilaria Ferrocino, Kelly Rantsiou (UNITO) ; Abelardo Margolles, Pedro Riesco, Lorena Ruiz (CSIC) ; Bastien Renard, Christèle Humblot (IRD) ; John Kenny, Katie O’Mahony, Anik Khan (TEAGASC) ; Jekaterina Kazantseva (TFAK) ; Claudia Mengoni, Hriturak Dey (UNITN) ; Tanja Kostic (AIT).

From “synthetic” to defined microbial communities for clearer terminology

Stéphane Chaillou participated in a joint reflection with a group of international researchers, coordinated by the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT), on the terminology used to describe certain microbial communities. The collective of experts proposes replacing the term “synthetic community” (or SynCom), sometimes perceived negatively, with “Defined Microbial Community”.

Harnessing gut microbiome diversity for next-generation fermented foods

On June 5, 2026, Julien Tap participated in the INRAE-Tokyo NODAI Joint Symposium on Fermentation and Food Bioscience. This online event brought together researchers from INRAE and the Tokyo University of Agriculture to discuss fermentation microbiology, food bioscience, taste, and microbiome-based approaches to health. More than 100 participants attended the symposium, most of them Japanese students, highlighting the strong interest of the next generation in fermentation and microbiome science.

DOMINO 3rd annual meeting in Madrid

After three years, the #DominoEU project has reached full speed, with significant results across all project objectives. The three-day meeting provided an opportunity to review the very busy year of 2025 and the many key findings that can be leveraged in the coming months.