ESTABLISHMENT AND OPERATION OF CULTURE COLLECTIONS

LABORATORY PROCEDURES FOR PLASMIDS

REFERENCE NO: PP/1998/01/02

TITLE: ESTABLISHMENT AND OPERATION OF CULTURE COLLECTIONS

CULTURE COLLECTIONS

The facilities of the laboratories and the training of the staff should be such that all activities can be performed according to the general rules of Good Microbiological Practice (GMP). This is the basis of sound collection maintenance, a condition sine qua non. In these guidelines it will be taken for granted that all the work is performed under GMP conditions.

Research programs should be a part of the collection's or its hostlaboratory's activities. This is essential to keep the collection's staff up to date of new developments, but also improves the quality of the collection.

Staff should be well-trained and the knowledge and skill has to be maintained.

PRESERVATION AND STORAGE

To minimize the chances on genetic changes, it recommended to maintain the biological material by at least two different methods, and at least one of them should be maintenance in a metabolically inactive way: cryopreservation or lyophilization.

As the number of uncultured (micro)organisms far exceeds that of the cultured ones, research for both isolation and preservation techniques is highly needed. Also the development of screening procedures for particular organisms, of preservation protocols for biological material difficult to preserve by routine procedures, and of optimal cultivation media and conditions for growth are tasks of a well-run culture collection.

In order to minimize the risks to important genetic resources from fire, flooding, earthquakes, war or catastrophes, collections should arrange to have duplicates of at least the most important and irreplaceable resources and their associated documentation securely housed in a different building or ideally at a separate site.

DOCUMENTATION, CATALOGUES AND ON-LINE INFORMATION

For each resource records have to be kept. These not only include data like locality of origin, substrate, host, date of isolation/construction, name of the person who isolated/constucted the resource, depositor, etc., but also preservation methods applied, cultivation conditions, security and quality codes, characteristics and restrictions.

For optimal availability, records should be computerized and made available on-line. For bacteria, respectively yeasts and fungi the Microbial Information Network Europe (MINE) format (Stalpers et al. 1990, respectively Gams et al., 1988) should be adopted. Data on plasmids, viruses and transposons must be handled based on the PVT format (Vicente et al. 1992).

From the computerized database catalogues of the resources available for distribution could be printed.

Several of the collection's staff should be familiar with the operation of the database system in order to provide cover during periods of absence.

For security reasons, duplicate computer files or hardcopies should be kept separately.

RESOURCE AUTHENTICATION

Resources orderd from culture collections are expected to be authentic. The collection should take care to ensure the biological material remains conform to the original deposit by carrying out appropriate tests on a regular basis and according to the state of the art.

RESOURCE SUPPLY AND OTHER SERVICES

The resources offered in the collections' catalogues should be distributed to individuals operating in a professional environment, subject to the restrictions indicated and to any import, quarantine or containment regulations that might apply as well as to normal credit control procedures where charges are required to be made.

The collections should provide their customers with all necessary information on the ordering procedure. This information should also be enclosed in the catalogue.

Collections should also maintain a detailed customer database recording the name and address of the customer, the kind of resource sent (e.g. name and accession number), method and date of shipment.

International pertinent postal regulations regarding packaging and labeling of biological material need to be followed.

Next to resource supply, culture collections may provide a variety of other services to the scientific and industrial community, e.g.: identification of microorganisms, public deposit, safe deposit, patent deposit, contract research, consultancy, training courses.

References

Gams et al. 1988. Structuring strain data for storage and retrieval of information on fungi and yeasts in MINE, the Microbial Information Network Europe. Journal of General Microbiology 134, 1667-1689

Hawksworth et al. 1990. Guidelines for the establishment and operation of collections of microorganisms. World Federation for Culture Collections, 1990. ISBN 92 91029 041 8

Stalpers et al. 1990. Structuring strain data for storage and retrieval of information on bacteria in MINE, the Microbial Information Network Europe. Systematic and Applied Microbiology 13, 92-103

Vicente et al. 1992. A standardized format for handling data on plasmids, viruses and transposons: the PVT database format. World Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology 8, 519-526

WFCC, 1999. Guidelines for the etablishment and operation of collections of cultures of microorganims, 2^nd edition. ISBN 92 9109 043 3 (see M/1999/1.00 Appendix 1)

Guidelines prepared for CABRI by BCCM/LMBP in cooperation with DSMZ and NCCB, 7 May 1998
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