Introduction

In response to the needs of users, many culture collections provide a range of services to the scientific, technological and commercial world. This chapter provides an introduction to the types of services available from culture collections, but it is beyond its scope to give a comprehensive list of such services. As the range of work that can be undertaken is increasing at many of the collections, the reader should contact individual collections to find out whether they can offer particular services.

Types of services

Directly associated and customer services

The two major services which are intrinsically part of culture collection work are those concerning the identification and preservation of organisms. Collections of necessity need expertise in these fields to be able to function, and many provide comprehensive services in these areas. Aspects of culture identification methods (Chapter 5), sales of cultures (Chapter 3), preservation techniques (Chapter 4) and patent deposits (Chapter 6) are covered elsewhere in this volume.

Safe-Deposits. Many collections hold organisms which are not listed in their catalogues. These cultures are held for a variety of reasons: the organisms may not be fully identified, their taxonomic status may be unclear, their stability in preservation may be suspect or they may be held at the request of the depositor who wishes to have back-up material and yet retain ownership and confidentiality, not releasing the strain to other parties. Many collections have introduced safe-deposit services as a back-up to the depositor's working collection, providing a service intermediate between an open collection deposit and a deposit for patent purposes.

Culture

The variety of nutritional requirements covering the whole spectrum of known bacteria is wide, and aspects of initial culture of bacteria that will be considered here will be restricted to those relating to the subsequent process of diverse preservation techniques. Reference should be made to standard textbooks for information on how best to grow different species, details of media formulations, pH, gaseous conditions and optimum incubation temperatures and times. However, a number of general factors must be borne in mind regarding culture for preservation.

Primary isolation

An obvious first requirement is to ensure that the culture is pure. Wherever practicable, the use of solid media is to be preferred to liquid media, since these allow plating out and subsequent single-colony isolations. In medical bacteriology, one plating out and single-colony isolation is usual for immediate investigations (for example, identification or determination of antibiotic sensitivity), where speed of obtaining an answer is the over-riding factor. For less urgent requirements and for preservation, however, it is advisable to go through two or even three successive platings out and single-colony isolations to ensure purity of the culture.

Enrichment

Primary isolation may sometimes be preceded by enrichment of the source material and usually this will be done in liquid media. Indeed, liquid media may be essential if the required bacterium requires, for example, good aeration or fluxing with special gases. Plating out from appropriate dilutions will yield single colonies and again, wherever practicable, further culture should be carried out on solid media.

The rapid advances taking place in biotechnology have introduced large numbers of scientists and engineers to the need for handling microorganisms, often for the first time. Questions are frequently raised concerning sources of cultures, location of strains with particular properties, requirements for handling the cultures, preservation and identification methods, regulations for shipping, or the deposit of strains for patent purposes. For those in industry, research institutes or universities with little experience in these areas, resolving such difficulties may seem overwhelming. The purpose of the World Federation for Culture Collections' (WFCC) series, Living Resources for Biotechnology, is to provide answers to these questions.

Living Resources for Biotechnology is a series of practical books that provide primary data and guides to sources for further information on matters relating to the location and use of different kinds of biological material of interest to biotechnologists. A deliberate decision was taken to produce separate volumes for each group of microorganism rather than a combined compendium, since our enquiries suggested that inexpensive specialised books would be of more general value than a larger volume containing information irrelevant to workers with interests in one particular type of organism. As a result each volume contains specialised information together with material on general matters (information centres, patents, consumer services, the international coordination of culture collection activities) that is common to each.

The WFCC is an international organisation concerned with the establishment of microbial resource centres and the promotion of their activities.

Introduction

Individual resource and information centres provide valuable services to biotechnology, but their role can be substantially enhanced if their activities are effectively co-ordinated. This has been recognised in the past, and a number of committees, federations and networks have been set up for this purpose at the national, regional and international levels. Although the origins and composition of existing organisations differ and their geographical locations are widespread, their common purpose is to support and develop the activities of resource and information centres for the benefit of microbiology.

International organisation

World Federation for Culture Collections

There are fewer difficulties in setting up national and regional co-ordinating mechanisms than international systems, and yet one of the first developments in this area was the formation of the World Federation for Culture Collections (WFCC). In 1962 at a Conference on Culture Collections held in Canada it was recommended that the International Association of Microbiological Societies (IAMS) set up a Section on Culture Collections. The Section was established in 1963. Five years later, at an International Conference on Culture Collections in Tokyo, the formation of the WFCC was proposed and an ad hoc committee, together with the Section on Culture Collections, drew up statutes which were agreed at a congress in 1970. Following the conversion of the IAMS to Union status, the WFCC is now a federation of the International Union of Microbiological Societies (IUMS) and an Organisation of resource centres 161 interdisciplinary Commission of the International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS).

Introduction

Microbiologists are faced with consideration of exponential growth in their laboratories on a daily basis. As users of a chapter on information resources for biotechnology they are exposed to a double dose of exponential growth. First, the explosion of information technology itself is due to the massive amounts of computing power available at ever diminishing cost. In turn, a population of computer aware and computer literate microbiologists represent a growing demand for more sophisticated access to modern information technology. The community of information technologists in concert with microbiologists are responding to this demand with a multiplicity of initiatives using various strategies.

The resulting activity induces feelings of inadequacy in the authors of such chapters as this, since at the moment of delivery to the editors the information is out of date. Resources previously known only by rumour are tested. Simple facilities being tested as pilot projects are quickly made available to the community. Local data banks open their doors to regional and even world-wide participation. Databases on databases spring up because of the need to discover available resources. The net result is an ever increasing base of information resources for biotechnologists.

In some cases, useful resources fall by the wayside, as have at least two of the resources listed. They have been discontinued in the interval between the first and present versions of this chapter. The root cause of such discontinuing of effort is lack of appreciation by the initial funding bodies of the complexity and time scale involved in database initiatives of this sort.

Introduction

Bacteria are ubiquitous and although the most comprehensive compendium, Bergey's Manual, lists only two to three thousand named species, the diversity of habitats means that no single identification scheme can be devised for the whole spectrum. With bacteria, the species definition itself is pragmatic, since a species is that which, for practical purposes, we find useful to consider as a species. A listing of only two to three thousand species names – a small number compared with, say, fungi, or insects – perhaps tells us more about the restraint of bacterial taxonomists rather than about bacterial diversity. It is certain that a unit currently considered to be ‘species’ in one of those parts of the total bacterial spectrum that has come under much study (e.g. pathogens of the human gut; antibiotic producing soil organisms) does not correspond in taxonomic rank with a ‘species’ in a little-studied part of the spectrum.

Identification to species level, however broadly or narrowly defined, is a major part of bacteriological practical work. However, it may be important to know not only to what species the organisms belong, but whether two or more isolates are, in fact, the same strain. For example, from multiple isolates in a hospital, can it be deduced whether a particular strain is spreading?

Administration

Supply of cultures

The aim of service culture collections is to supply authenticated cultures to bona fide scientists, on request, promptly and without restriction on their ultimate use. The supply of certain bacteria such as pathogens (plant, animal or human) or patent strains will, however, be subject to statutory regulations and collections may impose further conditions. These may include, for example, proof that the requesting scientist holds the appropriate licence or permit to work with the cultures requested; that the request or order for cultures bears an authorised signature; and that an appropriate import licence is held. Supply of cultures to and from different countries, if pathogenic to man or animals, is subject to the International Air Transport Association (IATA) regulations whether sent by post or by air-freight. While the culture collection will effect the despatch of cultures as quickly as possible, delay can occur if those requesting the cultures are unaware of, or attempt to ignore, regulations. The collections, however, can only operate within the regulations.

Location of strains

The primary information about cultures available from a particular collection will be found in its printed catalogue. These, however, are not published as frequently as, say, catalogues of commercial suppliers of chemicals or equipment and so are never fully up-to-date. Many catalogues are now held on computers, and this enables quick and continual up-date by the collection and, in some cases, can be made available on-line (see Chapter 2).

Bacteria have a daily impact upon human activities. The emergence of the new biotechnology has increased the awareness by scientists of the long recognised need for reliable, permanent, culture collections which safe-keep viable exemplars of the many known bacterial species and varieties. There is now an increased awareness too that what is in fact conserved in service collections represents but a small part of the bacterial gene pool. Outside the recognised and long-established ‘service-supply culture collections’ there are many other centres whose holdings of cultures add to overall microbial, living resources available to scientists. There is an emphasis in this book on what defines a useful microbial resource: the cultures themselves, their documentation, and increasingly wide knowledge of their existence.

Today we are also in an age of developing information technology. Progress here enhances the existing resources, making it increasingly easy for individual scientists to access the great body of technical information associated with holdings of cultures. An additional benefit from the use of information technology to improve wider access to known information is to bring more clearly into focus gaps in our present knowledge and shortfalls in the presently conserved ranges of organisms available.

This book is an introduction to these resources, to culture collections, their holdings, and to the ways and means scientists responsible for their upkeep are exploiting information technology in the service of science. Hopefully, it will act as a stimulus to both research scientists and those engaged even in focused applied work. Reality dictates that often the distinction between research and applied science is blurred, but the extremes of each have need for authenticated, documented exemplars of the known microbial gene pool.

The first systematic review of the naturally occurring lignans was presented by Professor R.D. Haworth in his Tilden lecture of 1942. There have been a number of subsequent review articles, notably that by W.M. Hearon and W.S. MacGregor in 1955. Their chemistry was covered in a collection of learned reviews published in honour of Professor L.R. Row by Andhra University Press in 1978. The present work is the first to cover the whole field of lignan chemistry including the application and promise of lignans as pharmaceutical agents. It is anticipated that expansion will continue through the application of modern methods of chromatography including HPLC, combined with the use of 2D-NMR and NOE for structure evaluation. These techniques are of especial relevance to the study of oligomeric lignans which are touched upon in the text.

The principal classes are defined in Chapter 1 with an explanation of the system of nomenclature that has been adopted. The contribution of Dr G.P. Moss who took on the considerable task of rationalising the often conflicting systems is gratefully acknowledged. It is hoped that readers who find that we have diverged from their own preference will accept that changes had to be made in order to be self-consistent. The system used throughout the book evolved with the help of some twenty active researchers who kindly responded to our requests for criticism of draft proposals.

Chapter 2 is a registry of lignans described up to April 1988 and includes at least one leading literature reference and plant source for each entry.