Solving complex problems such as a worldwide pandemic and climate change requires transdisciplinary approaches across the life sciences. Genome Canada, together with Ontario Genomics and Canada’s other regional Genome Centres, is on a mission to deliver genomic solutions for pandemic preparedness, biomanufacturing, and our developing bio-economy.

Most chemicals are made from petroleum feedstocks and replacing them with sustainable feedstocks is essential for moving to a zero-carbon emissions economy. Bioprocesses operate at lower temperatures and pressures and have high specificity. These benefits combined with recent computational advances (e.g., structure prediction) and experimental developments (e.g., genome editing) in engineering biology motivates the application of bioengineering for sustainable chemicals production.

The GEN-FISH network consists of 24 committed and dedicated scientists who care passionately about the freshwater fishes of Canada and around the world. The GEN-FISH funding will ensure the development of novel, ground-breaking genomic technology to help conserve freshwater fish for generations to come.

Cellular agriculture allows us to grow animal products like meat, milk, and eggs from cells instead of animals. If we want to keep eating the foods we love through the uncertain climate conditions ahead, then Canada, like the rest of the world, needs to be proactive about developing this technology and diversifying our food system.

Ontario Genomics is the hub for the province’s genomics research and has shown leadership in this trying time through initiatives like ONCoV, which helped create a collaborative network to support Ontario’s response to the pandemic. Ontario Genomics provided invaluable user feedback and commercialization guidance to support the success and scalability of COVID Cloud. We are excited to continue our collaboration and extend the reach of this technology beyond COVID-19 to other public health crises and specialty disease areas.

Breeding animals resilient to heat stress and other environmental challenges exacerbated through climate change is a very important goal that will ensure a safe and sustainable food supply in a changing environment.

The advent of CRISPR technologies has been a game-changer for genome editing applications in therapeutics and agriculture. It is important to note the speed at which this disruptive technology has been adopted by industry, and how fast start-ups were created to commercialize various editing applications.

Exploring the ethical, social, legal, economic and environmental implications of advances in genomics and bioengineering is critically important to ensure a responsible governance of these technologies so that they are implemented for the benefit of Canadians and the world.

My research interest in genomics is in understanding the best use of genomics in infection prevention, particularly outbreak management. But much of my work in this pandemic has been to try to develop strategies to make sure that samples and meta-data are available to support everyone’s research agendas. The ONCoV Genomics Coalition, built by Ontario Genomics, has provided a vital platform to facilitate this.

Bioengineering and biomanufacturing are revolutionizing drug development through increased automation, miniaturization, and precision in the way we analyze and manipulate biological systems. It is exciting to see the successful use of such advanced health technologies in accelerating the development of highly effective vaccines, cell and gene therapies, and more.

GIFS is building out its biomanufacturing platform to scale up research, development, and production in agriculture and food. We’re pleased to be a member of the Ontario Genomics-led National Engineering Biology Steering Committee, driving Canada’s strategy for biomanufacturing that’s projected to have a huge impact on agri-food over the next decade.

Synthetic biology and bioengineering have the potential to meet a lot of global challenges. For instance, recent advances in cell-free synthetic biology have enabled my team to develop SARS-CoV-2 diagnostics, leveraging widely available point-of-care sensing devices such as glucose meters, to serve as nucleic acid sensors for variants of concern detection; for which international technology transfer efforts are now underway with researchers in Latin America and Asia.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, we are seeing increasing emergence of variants of concern (VOCs) and variants of interest (VOIs) which threaten the health and wellbeing of Canadians. The funding provided by Ontario Genomics and Genome Canada is helping my team to develop a genomics-based surveillance platform based on analysis of wastewater, providing a customizable tool for use in controlling the spread of infectious diseases, whether they be food or waterborne, or respiratory borne like COVID-19.