How legislations affect new taxonomic descriptions.

Restrictions placed on the distribution of biological material by the legislation of countries such as India, South Africa, or Brazil exclude strains that could serve as type material for the validation or valid publication of prokaryotic species names. This problem goes beyond prokaryotic taxonomy and is also relevant for other areas of biological research.

The global catalogue of microorganisms 10K type strain sequencing project: closing the genomic gaps for the validly published prokaryotic and fungi species.

Genomic information is essential for taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional studies to comprehensively decipher the characteristics of microorganisms, to explore microbiomes through metagenomics, and to answer fundamental questions of nature and human life. However, large gaps remain in the available genomic sequencing information published for bacterial and archaeal species, and the gaps are even larger for fungal type strains. The Global Catalogue of Microorganisms (GCM) leads an internationally coordinated effort to sequence type strains and close gaps in the genomic maps of microorganisms. Hence, the GCM aims to promote research by deep-mining genomic data.

The U.S. Culture Collection Network Responding to the Requirements of the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing.

The U.S. Culture Collection Network held a meeting to share information about how culture collections are responding to the requirements of the recently enacted Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The meeting included representatives of many culture collections and other biological collections, the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Secretariat of the CBD, interested scientific societies, and collection groups, including Scientific Collections International and the Global Genome Biodiversity Network. The participants learned about the policies of the United States and other countries regarding access to genetic resources, the definition of genetic resources, and the status of historical materials and genetic sequence information. Key topics included what constitutes access and how the CBD Access and Benefit-Sharing Clearing-House can help guide researchers through the process of obtaining Prior Informed Consent on Mutually Agreed Terms. U.S. scientists and their international collaborators are required to follow the regulations of other countries when working with microbes originally isolated outside the United States, and the local regulations required by the Nagoya Protocol vary by the country of origin of the genetic resource. Managers of diverse living collections in the United States described their holdings and their efforts to provide access to genetic resources. This meeting laid the foundation for cooperation in establishing a set of standard operating procedures for U.S. and international culture collections in response to the Nagoya Protocol.

World data centre for microorganisms: an information infrastructure to explore and utilize preserved microbial strains worldwide.

The World Data Centre for Microorganisms (WDCM) was established 50 years ago as the data center of the World Federation for Culture Collections (WFCC)-Microbial Resource Center (MIRCEN). WDCM aims to provide integrated information services using big data technology for microbial resource centers and microbiologists all over the world. Here, we provide an overview of WDCM including all of its integrated services. Culture Collections Information Worldwide (CCINFO) provides metadata information on 708 culture collections from 72 countries and regions. Global Catalogue of Microorganism (GCM) gathers strain catalogue information and provides a data retrieval, analysis, and visualization system of microbial resources. Currently, GCM includes >368 000 strains from 103 culture collections in 43 countries and regions. Analyzer of Bioresource Citation (ABC) is a data mining tool extracting strain related publications, patents, nucleotide sequences and genome information from public data sources to form a knowledge base. Reference Strain Catalogue (RSC) maintains a database of strains listed in International Standards Organization (ISO) and other international or regional standards. RSC allocates a unique identifier to strains recommended for use in diagnosis and quality control, and hence serves as a valuable cross-platform reference. WDCM provides free access to all these services at www.wdcm.org.

PERN: an EU-Russia initiative for rhizosphere microbial resources.

Millions of microbial taxa inhabit the rhizosphere and could be used as biofertilizers, biopesticides, and/or for bioremediation. Only a fraction of these microbes have been described and/or are being utilized. Most are dispersed in collections, but coordination of their accessibility and availability is challenging. Here, we present the Pan-European Rhizosphere Resource Network (PERN), which is a transnational repository of microorganisms whose objectives are to facilitate access to rhizosphere resources and information and help users with technical and legal issues.

Studies on monitoring and tracking genetic resources: an executive summary.

The principles underlying fair and equitable sharing of benefits derived from the utilization of genetic resources are set out in Article 15 of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, which stipulate that access to genetic resources is subject to the prior informed consent of the country where such resources are located and to mutually agreed terms regarding the sharing of benefits that could be derived from such access. One issue of particular concern for provider countries is how to monitor and track genetic resources once they have left the provider country and enter into use in a variety of forms. This report was commissioned to provide a detailed review of advances in DNA sequencing technologies, as those methods apply to identification of genetic resources, and the use of globally unique persistent identifiers for persistently linking to data and other forms of digital documentation that is linked to individual genetic resources. While the report was written for an audience with a mixture of technical, legal, and policy backgrounds it is relevant to the genomics community as it is an example of downstream application of genomics information.