Microbial culture collections: strains, services, projects and consortia to underpin the microbiotech innovation

• Author(s): Lima, Nelson
• Date: 2023
• Persistent ID: https://hdl.handle.net/1822/90896
• Origin: RepositóriUM - Universidade do Minho
• Subject(s): Culture Collections; mBRC; MIRRI-ERIC; MIRRI-PT/Pt-mBRCN
• Document Type: Other
• Language: English
• Contributor(s): Universidade do Minho

Description

Over the years, microbial culture collections (CCs) have been providing services to the scientific community, acting as reservoirs and providers of microorganisms, including their living cells, genomes, and information, being key players in the development of new and more sustainable products, compounds, and practices. When all these activities are performed under a legal framework and within a quality management system put in place the more advanced concept of microBiolological Resource Centre (mBRC), as defined by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), is applied. The OECD recognized the mBRC as “a key component of the scientific and technological infrastructure of the life sciences and biotechnology”. Taking this into consideration, at the European level the mBRC started to work together to establish the European Resource Research Infrastructure (MIRRI, www.mirri.org). After a preparatory phase and the recognition as a “Landmark” by the European Commission on the last ESFRI Roadmap, MIRRI became a non-for-profit international organization with its headquarters at the University of Minho. This Research Infrastructure has evolved as an ERIC legal entity and is now in the operational phase and involved, so far, in 13 EU projects, with a 100% success rate. The organizational structure of MIRRI-ERIC will be presented, and the ongoing projects as well as the services, including the Transnational Access, will be presented. Finally, the Portuguese node MIRRI-PT/Pt-mBRCN, coordinated by Micoteca da Universidade do Minho (MUM), and how it is implementing several cutting-edge technologies for the benefit of microbiology and biotechnology and to respond to user communities' demands will be also presented.