What we do
University of Minho

The Bioinformatics and Systems Biology group from the Centre of Biological Engineering at University of Minho has extensive experience in the development of algorithms and computational tools for metabolic engineering. 




What We Do

The University of Minho aims to be a University without borders, focusing on the regional, national and international socioeconomic & environmental development. UMinho is a research university, engaged in the valorization of chain knowledge-research, development and innovation.

The Centre of Biological Engineering (CEB), designated as “Excellent” by FCT, the Foundation for Science and Technology in Portugal, is a research unit located at UMinho that develops its activities on 4 interdisciplinary areas covering molecular, cellular and process scales, corresponding to the following thematic strands:

  1. Industrial Biotechnology and Bioengineering,
  2. Food Biotechnology and Bioengineering
  3. Environmental Biotechnology and Bioengineering,
  4. Health Biotechnology and Bioengineering. 

The outcomes of CEB in the last 5 years include 1250 peer-reviewed papers (23% in ISI D1 journals), 35 edited books, 177 book chapters and 89 PhD thesis concluded. The income budget derived from research projects (including industry research income) and from external funding bodies turns on average 5M €/year. CEB has also supported the formation of more than 15 spin-off and startup companies, with 15 patents to its name. CEB is widely recognized in the field of biotechnology and bioengineering and has all the laboratory facilities available that are relevant to this project.

The team participating in this project is part of the Bioinformatics and Systems Biology research lab within CEB, which has been developing computational tools for metabolic model reconstruction, simulation and optimization, including opensource projects such as OptFlux and Merlin. An important topic deals with the development of evolutionary algorithms for strain optimisation. Other topics relate to database integration, omics data analysis and mining through machine learning algorithms. The main applications include the identification of targets for metabolic engineering, aiming at constructing improved cellular factories for the production of succinic, fumaric or amino acids.

UMinho's key contributions to the ShikiFactory100 project include: metabolic engineering target predictions, and ML/DL-based molecular design. They are key contributors to Work Package 3: Design & Chemical Synthesis of New Products, and Work Package 5: In silico Metabolic Engineering.

The Principal Investigator for UMinho in the ShikiFactory100 project is Prof. Miguel Rocha.

Find out more about the University of Minho here.



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Partners

SilicoLife
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EMBL
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EMBL
EMBL is Europe’s flagship laboratory for life sciences.
DSM
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University of Manchester
University of Manchester

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University of Manchester
The University of Manchester is the largest single-site university in the UK, with research strengths across all scientific disciplines.
University of Minho
UMinho

Braga, Portugal

University of Minho
The University of Minho has expertise in the development of algorithms and computational tools for metabolic engineering.
University NOVA de Lisboa
NOVA

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University NOVA de Lisboa
Universidade NOVA de Lisboa is the youngest of Lisbon's state universities.
c-LEcta
c-LEcta

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GalChimia
GalChimia

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NNFCC
NNFCC

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NNFCC
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Polytechnic University of Valencia
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University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge

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University of Cambridge
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