Bringing together Europe's microbial resource centres

Overview

Results

The team

Related information

So what's the problem?

The properties of microorganisms have been harnessed by man for thousands of years, particularly in brewing and baking but their uses continue to expand not just in food and healthcare but in almost all areas of industry and environmental maintenance. Their authentication, characterisation, stable storage and supply are a major contribution to the knowledge-based bioeconomy.

EMbaRC is an EU project that brings together 10 organisations across Europe including CABI. It aims to improve, coordinate and validate microbial resource centre (MRC) delivery to European and International researchers from both public and private sectors. The EMbaRC project is a mixture of networking, access, training and research.

What is this project doing?

EMbaRC will establish a self-sustainable community of European Microbial Resource Centres representing a large bio-diversity and offering a wide-range bio-resources and expert services. These services will enable the development of new partnerships with public institutes in the field of biodiversity and will facilitate revenue-generating partnerships with industry. The long-term objective is to enable not only the EMbaRC partners but other European Biological Resource Centre's, especially those who are endangered or isolated, to find complementary sources of funding to ensure their future existence.

EMbaRC aims to add-value to the current set of collections by harmonising methods for strain identification and validation of reference strains. It also intends to ensure consistent quality of all European collections resources by bringing together current best practice, tools and operational standards. To ensure harmonisation of the quality of Microbial Resource Centre's, the consortium plans to implement the current OECD best practice guidelines and emerging national standards for Biological Resource Centres (BRCs) at the international level. Outreach and training activities will enable not only the EMbaRC consortium but all European collections to operate according to the standards required to deliver products and services of comparable and consistent quality thus meeting customer expectations both present and future.

The EMbaRC project takes European collection networking to new heights of coordination and efficiency providing new services and better access for users. The opportunity will be taken to work more closely with the user community. A one-stop access to the collections of EMbaRC and the wider European Biological Resource Centre community via a searchable web portal will be provided, building on the outcomes of the previous EU projects, CABRI and EBRCN, whilst adopting appropriate new IT technologies.

Another important aspect of the consortium will be to provide the research community at large with access to high quality biological resources backed up by the joint-expertise, services and data of the project consortium. This will enable each individuals research needs to be fully addressed. It will also set up a concerted outreach programme including training workshops, dissemination events and a project web site and ensure that delivery of products and services meet the current and developing needs of the public and private research community.

At the research level EMbaRC aims to add value to the current set of collections and related services for the benefit of all users. It will do this by developing improved techniques for strain and DNA storage to enable longer shelf-life. The project will also create a high quality European microbial DNA bank Network and explore new methods for the identification of species to ensure more accurate identification of the bioresources.

The EMbaRC project will also deliver new methods for strain and DNA preservation, novel techniques for identifying species and high throughput screening for enzymes of industrial interest. The networking elements will give better access to authentic microorganisms and validated associated data and provide a set of business models to increase self-sustainability of BRCs. This project creates the European node of the OECD envisaged Global Biological Resource Centre Network.

At a strategic level EMbaRC will lay down the foundations of the future Global Biological Resource Centre Network (GBRCN) ensuring that European expertise and research are at the forefront of the International scene.

Results so far

The consortium has begun to establish EMbaRC's training and outreach programme. This will help ensure that microbiologists working in the EU and associated countries can take advantage of the consortium's work. This programme will also provide scientists with the opportunity to visit an EMbaRC resource centre, where they can benefit from expert advice and advanced equipment through hands-on sessions. For more information, click here >

Project reports

CABI project flyer

Project Executive