Abstract :
[en] BCCM culture collections at the heart of the ex situ microbial biodiversity conservation
Macroorganisms cannot live independently without their microbial partners and their surrounding biodiversity. Survival and evolution are indeed linked to the variety of interactions between higher organisms and their microbiome. Given the difficulty to explore organisms that are invisible to the eye and the non-iconic status of a microbe versus a panda bear, the importance of microbial biodiversity is often forgotten.
The oldest collections of microorganisms were established in the late 19th century. In Belgium, the "Belgian Coordinated Collections of Microorganisms" (BCCM) was created in 1983 to unite three existing culture collections of bacteria, yeasts, and filamentous fungi in a decentralised consortium supported by a coordination cell located at the Belgian Science Policy Office (BelSPO). Since then, it has welcomed four more collections dedicated to cyanobacteria, algae, mycobacteria, and recombinant plasmids. Moreover, a Quality Management System was put in place and an ISO 9001 certification covers the deposit and distribution processes. Currently, the BCCM collections are among the biggest in the world, both in terms of the number of their biological materials that are stored, as in terms of their expertise and services offered towards both academical and industrial partners.
The BCCM entities are dedicated to the conservation of biodiversity. This commitment involves accepting strains and genetic resources in their public collections, with due respect of their legal obligations. Additionally, they actively isolate new strains from environmental samples, sometimes from biotopes threatened by global changes. For example, BCCM/ULC and BCCM/LMG conserve strains from Antarctic biotopes (including endemic taxa), mangrove forests and the Red Sea, while BCCM/ITM comprises mycobacteria from tropic swamps. The biological material deposited in each entity is identified and characterized by state-of-the-art methods based on the expertise of their curators and scientists. Their know-how is also shared through open access scientific publications and communicated with the general public via exhibitions and newsletters. Scientists engaged in fundamental or applied research, industrial applications, or quality control or teaching purposes can acquire the publicly available biological resources for a nominal fee. The recent developments in genomics are met at BCCM with the development of the GEN-ERA toolbox, a suite of Nextflow-Singularity workflows designed for comparative genomics of prokaryotes and small eukaryotes.
https://bccm.belspo.be/about-us/consortium
