ACM - Australian Collections of Microorganisms

The Australian Collections of Microorganisms Program will develop strategies to improve support for culture collections to encourage the ex-situ conservation of Australian microbial diversity and to provide the necessary facilities to underpin research in the life sciences and biotechnology. Australian culture collections will be integrated into a network to maintain and preserve representative cultures derived from the Australian Microbial Resources Study to meet current and future needs. Ex-situ conservation of cultures will encompass the need to have cultures representative of species, metabolic, genetic, epidemiological, and evolutionary diversity and will encourage the conservation of cultures derived from Australian research. Strategies will be developed to have close linkages between culture collections and researchers working on the microbial diversity and taxonomy of relevant taxa. Objectives of this program will be to establish electronic catalogues for all participant collections and to make these catalogues available through the Research Network website. Standard operating procedures and guidelines will be developed to ensure the quality of cultures and data. An advisory committee will be established to explore means to ensure that adequate culture collection resources are available to meet the needs of science, technology, and industry.