Skerman and beyond: 2019 status of the Global Catalogue of Microorganisms

Abstract

The World Federation for Culture Collections (WFCC)-MIRCEN World Data Centre for Microorganisms (WDCM) was set up as a data centre of WFCC and UNESCO World Network of Microbiological Resources Centres (MIRCEN). The WDCM is a vehicle for networking microbial resource centres of various types of microorganisms. It also serves as an information resource for the customers of the microbial resource centres (http://www.wdcm.org/). The WDCM was established in 1966 by the late Professor V.B.D. Skerman in Australia, later moved to Japan in 1986 and since 2010 is based in China under the Directorship of Dr Juncai Ma. Current databases at the WDCM are the Culture Collections Information Worldwide (CCINFO), Global Catalogue of Microorganisms (GCM) and the WDCM Reference Strain Catalogue. In addition, Analyzer of Bio-resource citations (ABC) and Statistics on Patented Microorganisms are available (http://www.wdcm.org/databases.html). In this article the status of the GCM and its associated 10K type strain sequencing project that currently provides services to taxonomists for standard genome sequencing and annotation will be communicated.