Trans-National Acess to BRCs with EMbaRC : A user -oriented Approach to Foster Research and Innovation
Résumé
The European Consortium of Microbial Resource Centres (EMbaRC) is a Research
Infrastructure project gathering 8 major microbial Biological Resource Centres
(BRCs) in Europe. It aims at improving, coordinating and validating microbial
resource delivery to European and international researchers from public and
private sectors. A major action in EMbaRC is to set up a Training and Outreach
Programme, providing European research teams with a physical access not only to
microbial BRCs holding bacteria, yeasts, filamentous fungi and plasmids, but
also to associated installations and expertise. Through EU-funded stays for 1
to 6 weeks, European scientists performed experiments in various fields of
microbiology. Researchers used advanced techniques for identification and
typing of micro-organisms: molecular biology (16S rDNA sequencing, DNA-DNA
hybridization, AFLP, PFGE, RAPD, FISH) and chemotaxonomy (MALDI-TOF, FTIR,
FAME, enzyme activity high throughput screening). Phenotypic characterisation
of isolates (bacteriocin or enzyme production) was also carried out, in some
cases to develop polyphasic approaches for identification. Access to
microscopic facilities (confocal and epifluorescence microscopes) was also
provided, notably to biofilm-related projects. In most of the cases, access
provision was also an opportunity to disseminate good practices in collection
and database management, including preservation techniques and appropriate use
of public sequence databases, fostering the operation of European microbial
collections according to appropriate standards and methods. This action also
impacts students thanks to the access given to academic users.
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