Culture collections and other ex-situ collections containing Antarctic genetic resources
This list of collections of Antarctic cultures and strains is not complete, but should rather be considered indicative. We welcome additions to this list, and encourage those who would like to list a particular collection to contact UNU-IAS at tki@ias.unu.edu.
- American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) (USA)
ATCC is a private, nonprofit biological resource center (BRC) and research organization whose mission focuses on the acquisition, authentication, production, preservation, development and distribution of standard reference microorganisms, cell lines and other materials for research in the life sciences. ATCC's collections include a wide range of biological materials for research, including cell lines, molecular genomics tools, microorganisms and bioproducts. The organization holds a collection of more than 3,400 human, animal and plant cell lines. ATCC's microorganism collection includes more than 18,000 strains of bacteria, 2,000 different types of animal viruses and 1,000 plant viruses. In addition, ATCC maintains collections of protozoans, yeasts and fungi with over 49,000 yeast and fungi strains and 2,000 strains of protists. The collection includes a number of Antarctic cultures. - Antarctic Protist Culture Collection (USA)
The Antarctic culture collection, hosted at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, consists of a diverse assortment of protists representing many of the groups found in marine microbial communities and several novel psychrophilic protists. The cultures were originally collected as enrichment samples during a Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS) cruise and a Life in extreme Environments (LExEn) cruise on board the Nathaniel B. Palmer (NBP). The protists were collected from water, ice, slush and sediment environments in the Ross Sea, Antarctica. The collection now consists of approximately 80 clonal and uniprotistan cultures in addition to 150 mixed enrichments. - Australian Collection of Antarctic Microorganisms (ACAM) (Australia)
The Australian Collection of Antarctic Microorganisms (ACAM) was established in 1986 at the University of Tasmania as a collection for microorganisms from the Antarctic continent as well as from subantarctic islands and the Southern Ocean. ACAM is one of the few collections in the world dedicated to the collection of Antarctic bacteria and since its inception has grown to nearly 400 strains. Many of these strains have been isolated from lakes and marine waters in the Vestfold Hills region of Antarctica near Davis Station. - Belgian Co-ordinated Collections of Micro-organisms (Belgium)
The Belgian Co-ordinated Collections of Micro-organisms (BCCM) consist of four complementary research-based service culture collections (BCCM/IHEM biomedical fungi & yeasts; BCCM/LMBP plasmids & DNA libraries; BCCM/LMG bacteria; and BCCM/MUCL (agro)industrial fungi & yeasts). The Belgian government is funding these four Belgian Coordinated Collections of Micro-organisms through a long-term support programme, which is scientifically and financially evaluated each five years. Over 47,500 well-documented and authenticated strains of bacteria, filamentous and yeast fungi (including the most important test and control strains) and 950 plasmids are readily deliverable by BCCM on a world-wide basis. 18 unique DNA libraries are also made available. These include Antarctic bacteria, fungi and yeasts, including, in particular, the polar cyanobacteria collection of 200 antarctic strains, representing the orders of Chroococcales, Oscillatoriales and Nostocales (see: http://bccm.belspo.be/projects/programme2005-2008/c30014/) - British Antarctic Survey Herbarium (AAS) (UK)
The collection contains over 40,000 plant specimens from Antarctica, the sub-Antarctic Islands and surrounding continents (especially Fuegia and Patagonia). Over 2000 species are represented, comprising predominantly mosses, liverworts and lichens with smaller collections of vascular plants, macro-algae and macro-fungi. The herbarium specimens are available for loan to recognised institutions. - CABI Genetic Resource Collection (UK) (see also http://www.cabi.org/)
CABI is a not-for-profit science-based development and information organization. The CABI Genetic Resource Collection contains some 19,600 accessions, including over 30 from Antarctica. - Centraalbureau voor Schimmelcultures (CBS) Fungal Biodiversity Centre (The Netherlands)
CBS is an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and maintains collection of living filamentous fungi, yeasts and bacteria. The collection includes over 50,000 strains of micro-organisms, representing a large percentage of the species in the fungal kingdom that have been cultured to date, including a relatively large number of strains originating from Antarctica. - CSIRO Collection of Living Microalgae (Australia)
The CSIRO Collection of Living Microalgae is a culture collection of over 800 strains, including representatives from all classes of marine microalgae, some freshwater microalgae, and unusual marine microheterotrophs. The culture collection specialises in the Australian region, with microalgae from tropical to polar waters, as well as microalgae from around the world, including Antarctica. - Culture Collection of Algae and Protozoa (CCAP) (UK)
CCAP functions as the national service collection of algae and protozoa in the UK and is linked with other service collections worldwide via the World Federation for Culture Collections (WFCC). The collection includes over 2000 strains of algae and protozoa, including strains from Antarctica. - Culture Collection of Autotrophic Organisms (CCALA) (Czech Republic)
This collection is based at the Institute of Botany, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. The on-line catalogue contains 175 strains of cyanobacteria, 351 strains of algae and 15 strains of non-seed plants. The collection includes polar and arctic strains and isolates of snow algae. - German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures (DSMZ) (Germany)
The DSMZ - Deutsche Sammlung von Mikroorganismen und Zellkulturen GmbH (German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures) is the most comprehensive Biological Resource Centre in Europe. The DSMZ collections contain more than 18,000 microorganisms, 1,200 plant viruses, 600 human and animal cell lines, 770 plant cell cultures and more than 7,100 cultures deposited for the purposes of patenting. The collection includes Antarctic cultures. The DSMZ is an independent, non-profit organisation. - Korean Agricultural Culture Collection (Korea)
The Korean Agricultural Culture Collection (KACC) was established in 1995, in order to conserve microbial diversity in agricultural environments, providing related services to professional microbial research societies. KACC classifies and preserves diverse Korean microbial resources including bacteria, actinomycetes, yeasts, filamentous fungi and mushrooms. Moreover, in collaboration with Centraalbureau voor Schimmelcultures (CBS), Deutsche Smmlung von Microorganismen und Zellkulturen GembH (DSMZ) and other international collection organizations, type strains from overseas are kept in KACC. KACC now maintains over 4,900 cultures of microorganisms, which are available to the public through its website (http://kacc.rda.go.kr), and distributes ca. 1,500 cultures annually to microbial researchers. While generally oriented towards Korean microbial resources, the collection also includes a few collected from Antarctica. - Magellan BioSciences (USA)
Magellan BioSciences libraries include collections of over 10,000 marine microbes (from coral reefs around the world, coastal and temperate waters, shallow and deep ocean sediments, marine caves and Arctic and Antarctic waters) and over 55,000 fungi samples. - Microbial Type Culture Collection & Gene Bank (MTCC) (India)
The Microbial Type Culture Collection & Gene Bank (MTCC), an Indian National Facility, was established in 1986 and is sponsored jointly by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Govt. of India and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). At present, it has five sections, namely, Actinomycetes, Bacteria, Fungi, Yeasts and Plasmids, including some Antarctic strains. - Norwegian Institute for Water research (NIVA) (Norway)
Although no web-based catalogue is available as of yet, NIVA holds a collection of strains from Antarctica, in particular from Dronning Maud Land. - Japan Collection of Microorganisms (Japan)
Japan Collection of Microorganisms (JCM) was founded in 1980 at RIKEN (The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research), a semi-governmental research institute supported by the Science and Technology Agency (now Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) of Japan, as a culture collection of microorganisms. JCM supplies authentic microorganisms to researchers in the fields of life sciences and biotechnology. JCM preserves about 18,300 strains as of July, 2008, and available microorganisms from JCM are: about 6,600 strains of bacteria including actinomycetes, about 280 strains of archaea and about 4,000 strains of fungi including yeasts. These include microorganisms collected from Antarctica. -
University of Malaya Algae Culture Collection (UMACC) (Malaysia)
The University of Malaya Algae Culture Collection (UMACC) is the only culture collection of microalgae in Malaysia, consisting of more than 150 microalgal isolates. It serves as a national collection of microalgae and supplies selected cultures to both the research community and the industry. The UMACC has expanded with the recent addition of 15 isolates of Antarctic microalgae. The microalgae were isolated from snow, seawater and soil samples, and water from waste treatment pond collected around Casey Station, Antarctica. -
University of Waikato Antarctic Culture Collection (New Zealand)
The cultures in this collection were obtained as part of a microbial investigation of the Historic Huts areas on Ross Island. The purpose of the research was to gain knowledge of the fungal biodiversity and biochemical framework, focusing on the wood degrading potential of these fungi at both psychrophilic (cold) and mesophilic (moderate) temperatures. Two thousand and seventy six isolates consisting of 1177 filamentous fungi and 899 single celled microorganisms (yeast and bacteria) were isolated; all these cultures were frozen and now form the University of Waikato Antarctic Culture Collection. - Verenium (USA)
Veremium has a library of microbes and unique enzymes for commercial development sourced from extreme environments including Arctic environments, volcanoes, rain forests and deep sea hydrothermal vents. - VKM (Russian Federation)
VKM is one of the Russia's largest research and service collections in the field of non-medical microbiology. VKM operates as a Department of the G. K. Skryabin Institute of Biochemistry and Physiology of Microorganisms RAS at the Pushchino Biological Research Center. The collection maintains over 10,000 strains including many type and reference strains. The list of species maintained by VKM has been included in the World Directory of Collections of Cultures of Microorganisms of the World Data Centre, where VKM is assigned number 342. Research at VKM emphasizes taxonomy and ecology of selected groups of microorganisms - bacteria (including actinomycetes) and micro fungi (including yeasts). The collection includes Antarctic strains. - VTT Culture Collection (Finland)
VTT is a national service collection of microorganisms. The total holding of the culture collection is about 1400 yeasts, 1300 filamentous fungi and 3000 bacteria, which have been isolated or constructed during VTT research projects or ordered from other culture collections. The collection includes some Antarctic strains. - ZyGEM (New Zealand)
The ZyGEM culture collection includes more than 2000 extremophile organisms which include cold temperature fungi of three classes, and extremophile achaea and bacteria that has been characterized in over 200 publications.