The THERMOGENE project aims to identify transferase enzymes from microorganisms inhabiting natural hot environments. After ‘proof of concept’, the technologies based on new enzymes will be scaled-up in collaboration with biotech companies and commercialized. The project employs microbiology, large-scale genomics, bioinformatics, biochemistry and structural biology. It will be based on the following pipeline: sampling from natural thermal environments, isolation of phylogenetically diverse thermophilic species with desired enzymatic activities, sequencing of metagenomes or genomes of selected microorganisms, both new isolates and microorganisms from previously obtained culture collections of thermophiles, genome assembly, gene mining and functional classification of predicted proteins, high-throughput cloning, expression and activity screening, detailed biochemical and structural characterisation of selected novel enzymes.