A Public Culture Collection as Reservoir of Cyanobacterial Diversity and Taxonomic Reference Strains

The BCCM/ULC public collection (https://bccm.belspo.be/about-us/bccm-ulc) aims to gather a representative portion of cyanobacterial strains from different ecosystems with a focus on the polar diversity. Amongst the 243 strains, for which the 16S rRNA gene sequence was determined, 93 OTU’s (99% 16S rRNA similarity) could be detected.
The collection includes several reference (or ‘type’) strains for newly described taxa. They include Plectolyngbya hodgsonii (ULC009), Shackletoniella antarctica (ULC037), Timaviella circinata (ULC401) and T. karstica (ULC402), Cephalothrix komarekiana (ULC718) and Parakomarekiella sesnandensis (ULC591). Recently, the BLCC (Berthold-Laughinghouse Culture Collection) deposited 196 strains with several new taxa from different ecosystems in Florida. These deposits include Johannesbaptistia floridana (ULC590) isolated from benthic coastal substrata, Iningainema tapete (ULC575), which is able to produce nodularin, from a greenhouse, Brasilonema fioreae (ULC548), B. santannae (ULC544) and B. wernerae (ULC573) from terrestrial environments, Leptochromothrix (ULC597), Ophiophycus (ULC599) and Vermifilum (ULC454) from benthic mats in mangrove forests and Neolyngbya biscaynensis (ULC530) and Affixifilum floridanum (ULC525) from marine benthic cyanobacterial mats. These ecosystems offer a huge and still largely unexplored diversity of cyanobacteria. Moreover, they are a potential source of novel secondary compounds. For example, species of Neolyngbya and Brasilonema have been shown to produce compounds with antibiotic and antifungal properties.