UNIABDN was founded in 1495, is Scotland's third oldest University and is the fifth oldest in the UK. Aberdeen is an international university built on serving one of the most dynamic regions of Europe and is at the forefront of teaching and research in the humanities, medical sciences and physical sciences.

UNIABDN will contribute to WP4 with experience in: microbial isolation and cultivation; genome scanning for specialised metabolite biosynthetic pathways, in particular RiPPs, NRPS and PKS gene clusters; cloning and heterologous expression of biosynthetic gene clusters; metabolomic analysis of culture extracts using mass spectrometric molecular networking tools and compound isolation and structural characterisation using spectroscopic techniques (nuclear magnetic resonance and mass spectrometry). Our expertise extends to the over expression of biosynthetic enzymes to study their structure and function and to use them to generate ‘unnatural products’. We also have experience in the manipulation of biosynthetic gene clusters to generate natural product analogues. On the policy side (WP6) we have legal and policy experience in the areas of marine biotechnology and intellectual property rights, in particular with reference to the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) and its Nagoya Protocol, as well as marine genetic resources and questions regarding the sharing of benefits in the UN development of an international legally binding instrument on conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ ILBI). In this work package we will continue to provide pragmatic advice into these processes using building blocks based on good scientific practice and intellectual property law. Our previous input has been included in part in the current draft text for the BBNJ ILBI and recommendations to the CBD on digital sequence information (DSI) have been adopted almost entirely by the ad-hoc technical expert group on DSI.