Abstract
Well-managed genetic resources and associated metadata are essential to underpin research addressing the challenges to food security, healthcare, climate change, biodiversity, environment, education and our bio-based economy. Culture collections have supported microbiology research for over 100 years, whether they are collections belonging to individual scientists or institutional repositories. The 790 collections registered with the World Data Centre for Microorganisms (WDCM) together hold over three million strains representing a wide range of microbial diversity. This review provides an overview of the uses and outputs of collections that support work in mycology, agriculture and the environment. Further, it focusses on the advantages of coordinating efforts and establishes recommendations to improve resource provisions for research and the development of the necessary infrastructure. The CABI living resource collection provides an example that holds over 28,000 strains of fungi from 100 years of research in mycology. In the modern era, microbial interventions and solutions require knowledge not only of those microorganisms that can be grown and preserved axenically but also whole microbial communities: i.e. ‘microbiomes’. Current technologies enable us to access this latter, hidden resource, thereby facilitating a better understanding of how to harness and manipulate microbial communities to improve crop yields and allow successful interventions such as biocontrol of pests, diseases and invasive species. The WDCM Analyzer of Bio-resource Citations reports that 79,224 strains from 131 collections from 50 countries have been cited in 145,133 papers published in 50,307 journals from January, 1953 until April, 2020. These organisms have a multitude of uses, for example as sources of antibiotics, therapeutic drugs and other active agents. They have been applied widely including in the biodegradation, bioremediation, biotransformation and biotreatment of wastes. Further uses include interventions in agriculture for soil and plant health or biological control of pests and diseases. All of the above may be achieved by individual institutions but, by working together, collections can form a critical mass to focus on key global issues and can achieve much more. Mechanisms are suggested for coordinating collections in order to deliver a more comprehensive support system in the advancement of science and innovation.
Highlights
The aim of this review paper is to take the landmark of 100 years of mycology at CAB International-not normally expanded (CABI) as a basis for considering how culture collections have changed over the years to meet evolving needs of an ever-changing user community.Smith et al CABI Agric Biosci (2020) 1:2The first public service microbial culture collection was established, in 1890, by Professor Frantisek Kral at the German University of Prague, Czech Republic (Sly et al 1990)
This apparent lack of understanding of the value of depositing organisms for future study is exemplified by the fact that the strains that have been deposited, to date, in the World Data Centre for Microorganisms (WDCM) collections represent less than 25% of the species currently described and represents a very small proportion of the number of taxa estimated to occur in nature e.g. current estimates are for up to 3.8 million species of Fungi (Hawksworth and Lücking 2017), up to 5.1 M according to Blackwell (2011) and up to one million species of Prokaryotes (Louca et al 2019)
It is evident that Biological Resource Centre (BRC), microbial culture collections, provide resources that underpin research and many new products and uses of microorganisms have been enabled by the study of organisms from collections
Summary
The aim of this review paper is to take the landmark of 100 years of mycology at CABI as a basis for considering how culture collections have changed over the years to meet evolving needs of an ever-changing user community.Smith et al CABI Agric Biosci (2020) 1:2The first public service microbial culture collection was established, in 1890, by Professor Frantisek Kral at the German University of Prague, Czech Republic (Sly et al 1990). Stackebrandt et al (2014) went on to provide a sound case for journal editors to reinforce good practice, the requirement that strains cited in published research should be deposited in recognised public service collections and be available for scientific study (Becker et al 2019) This apparent lack of understanding of the value of depositing organisms for future study is exemplified by the fact that the strains that have been deposited, to date, in the WDCM collections represent less than 25% of the species currently described and represents a very small proportion of the number of taxa estimated to occur in nature e.g. current estimates are for up to 3.8 million species of Fungi (Hawksworth and Lücking 2017), up to 5.1 M according to Blackwell (2011) and up to one million species of Prokaryotes (Louca et al 2019)
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