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Production of Medium-Chain Length Polyhydroxyalkanoate (mcl-PHA) from Food Waste

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Overview

In Canada, 2.8M tonnes of plastic waste was landfilled or leaked into the environment in 2016. Banning of single-use plastics is driving demand for biodegradable plastic (bioplastic). Medium chain length polyhydroxylalkanoate (mcl-PHA) resin has ideal properties for agriculture and packaging films, showing high flexibility, processability, thermal stability and complete biodegradation into simpler, non-hazardous compounds. High production costs of existing mcl-PHA have limited the market potential and applications. Using technology to efficiently transform food waste into higher quality biodegradable resins (i.e., mcl-PHAs) would be a possible solution. This project will enable scale up and commercialization of low-carbon biodegradable medium-chain length polyhydroxyalkanoate (mcl-PHAs), through validation and enhancement of a two-stage process that consists of mixed culture dry fermentation of food waste into medium-chain length polyhydroxyalkanoates (mcl-PHA) for use as biodegradable plastics.

Lowpass Genomic Instability Characterization as a Comprehensive Cancer and Germline Diagnostic Assay

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Overview

Mutations in the mismatch repair or DNA polymerase genes lead to replication repair deficiency (RRD), a major cancer mechanism leading to genomic instability, microsatellite instability (MSI) and hypermutagenesis (high tumour mutation burden). RRD is a frequent driver of highly prevalent cancers such as colon, stomach, pancreatic, endometrial, and ovarian in adults, and brain and hematologic in children. There is a need to accurately identify patients with RRD as they are often resistant to chemotherapy but exquisitely sensitive to targeted and immuno-therapies; and have cancer predisposition syndromes so they, and their families, need surveillance. Current screening methods are time consuming, costly, and miss patients due to lack of sensitivity and specificity. This project will develop a sensitive and specific, cost-effective diagnostic tool for clinical RRD testing through a clinically validated lowpass genomic instability characterization diagnostic (LOGIC) assay. Benefits include savings to the health care system as well as potential revenue through the licence of this test to others both nationally and internationally.

Genome-environment interactions in Type 1 Diabetes

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Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) is a complex disease often arising in childhood in which the immune system destroys the insulin producing cells of the pancreas. Insulin is a crucial hormone in sugar and fat metabolism. Despite insulin therapy, T1D greatly increases the probability of heart attack, stroke, blindness and limb amputation, as well as shortened life expectancy. T1D afflicts some 200,000 Canadians and is caused by multiple genetic risk factors and currently unknown environmental factors. Now an innovative research project is investigating the interactions of genetic risks and environmental factors underlying T1D.

Jayne Danska, Senior Scientist at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children and Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto, and Andrew Macpherson, Canada Research Chair in mucosal immunology at McMaster University, are project leaders of Genome Environment Interactions in Type 1 Diabetes.

This project aims to understand the genetic control of T1D in humans and rodent models, and to study the role of exposure to common intestinal bacteria in regulating immune system development and how such exposures affect the probability that persons at genetic risk of T1D will develop the disease.

By identifying genetic variants and bacterial exposure associated with T1D, this project is expected to discover new genetic markers, and to identify environmental exposures to intestinal bacteria that modify inherited T1D risk.

Canada has the third highest rate of T1D in the world and the incidence is rising. T1D accounts for 10% of cases of all diabetes cases, and costs the Canadian healthcare system $1.32 billion in 2002 and is projected to rise to $1.6 billion by 2010. This project aims to decrease the disease burden and increase the quality of life and life expectancy of persons with T1D and their families.

Moreover, discoveries from this research project are expected to have implications for a number of other autoimmune disease states, such as multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease and rheumatoid arthritis.

Sustaining and securing Canada’s honey bees using ‘omic tools (2014)

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Honey bees play a critical role in Canadian agriculture. They produce 75 million pounds of honey each year and are responsible for pollinating many fruits and vegetable crops, nuts and oil seeds like canola. Through these activities, they contribute more than $4.6 billion to the Canadian economy each year. Given this critical role, the high rate at which bee colonies are dying off is particularly alarming, posing a serious threat to the productivity of Canadian agri-­food industries and jeopardizing Canada’s food security. Canadian beekeepers have lost more than a quarter of their colonies each winter since 2006-­07 with certain provinces experiencing significantly higher death in some years. Replacing these losses by purchasing queen bees from offshore, as beekeepers have been doing, risks importing new diseases or invasive strains of honey bees (such as “killer” bees from  the US). Dr. Leonard Foster of the University of British Columbia and Dr. Amro Zayed from York University are leading a project to guard the safety and sustainability of the beekeeping industry in Canada. The team will develop genomics and proteomics tools that will provide markers to selectively breed 12 economically valuable traits. This will enable beekeepers to quickly and cost­effectively breed healthy, disease-­resistant, productive bee colonies that are better able to survive harsh Canadian winters. While this will lessen, it will not eliminate, the need to import bees from other regions, so the team will also develop an accurate and cost-effective test to detect bees with Africanized genetics (“killer” bees). The team will work with beekeepers and other stakeholders and end users to ensure its tools are implemented and accessible to beekeepers by the end of the project. This will provide measurable economic benefits to Canada, including to beekeepers and the agri-­food industry and social benefits to the Canadian public. These benefits range in value from $8 million to $150 million per year.

Increasing feed efficiency and reducing methane emissions through genomics: A new promising goal for the Canadian dairy industry (2014)

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he Canadian dairy industry adds $16.2 billion to Canadian GDP each year (2011 figures). That figure is forecast to increase as international demand for dairy products grows in the coming years, due to growing middle classes in emerging economies, demand for high-quality milk proteins in developing countries and world population expansion more generally. That figure can also grow (by an estimated $100 million annually) by improving two key traits in dairy cattle: their ability to convert feed into increased milk production and a reduction in their methane emissions (methane being a powerful greenhouse gas). Dr. Filippo Miglior of the University of Guelph and Dr. Paul Stothard of the University of Alberta are leading a team that will use genomics-­based approaches to select for cattle with the genetic traits needed for more efficient feed conversion and lower methane emissions. To date, it has been both difficult and expensive to collect the data required for such selection. The latest genomic approaches and the award-winning phenotyping platform developed by Growsafe in Alberta offer an opportunity to address these problems and collect and assess the required data to carry out the selection. The results of this project will assist dairy farmers and the industry more broadly to develop cattle that will carry these two important traits. Farmers will save money (as feed is the single largest expense in milk production), while the international competitiveness of Canada’s dairy industry will increase. The environmental footprint of the dairy industry will also be reduced, in part due to lower methane emissions, but also because more feed efficient animals produce less manure waste. Broad application of the project’s findings will be enhanced by the involvement of several industry organizations and international research partners in the project, not only benefiting Canada’s dairy industry, but also contributing to global food security and  sustainability.

Genome Alberta Press Release

Towards a sustainable fishery for Nunavummiut (2014)

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Affordable access to safe, nutritious and culturally relevant food is one of the biggest challenges facing the Nunavummiut, the people of Nunavut. Food costs are 140 per cent higher in Nunavut than in the rest of Canada with eight times more Inuit households facing moderate to severe food insecurity. This lack of affordable, nutritious foods is linked to growing health problems, including diabetes and childhood rickets. Accelerated melting of Arctic sea ice due to climate change is increasing access to arguably the last remaining under-­exploited fishery in the Northern Hemisphere. This increased accessibility, primarily to Arctic char, but also to Arctic cod and Northern shrimp, coupled with a developed, sustainable, science-­based fishing plan will offer opportunities for employment and economic benefits for Nunavut communities as well as greater food security. It is the Nunavummiut that should be the beneficiaries of these resources, rather than foreign fishing fleets. Understanding the genetic differences among these fish populations is key to developing that plan. Dr. Virginia K. Walker of Queen’s University and colleagues together with the Nunavut communities will integrate traditional and local knowledge with leading-­edge genomic science and bioinformatics to gain an understanding of the genomes of these fish populations. This will allow monitoring of their migration, characteristics and adaptation and inform strategies to maintain genetically diverse and healthy stocks. The project will work toward strengthening Nunavut fisheries, augment sovereignty claims in the Canadian Arctic, increase employment and economic development opportunities, ensure access to a healthy food source, and improve food security for the people of Nunavut. The Walker Project website is www.arcticfishery.ca