-CELMS-

Members holdings

Group(s) of biological resources stored in the collection: bacteria (1720 strains), yeasts (6 strains), plasmids (including plasmid bearing strains >100).

  • The CELMS (Collection of Environmental and Laboratory Microbial Strains) is a collection of non-medical environmental and laboratory microbial strains situated at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Tartu. The collection was founded in 1995. Since 2008, the collection has been registered at the WFCC-MIRCEN World Data Centre for Microorganisms (registry number 926).
  • The collection is financed by the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research. The majority of strains have been isolated from polluted areas with significant impacts from oil shale mining and the chemical industry. Since 2008, bacterial isolates from different regions of the Baltic Sea have been added to the collection. In the period 2019-2020, several microbial strains were isolated from water samples taken from the western and southern Atlantic during the sailing voyage of the Estonian sailing ship "Admiral Bellingshausen" to the Antarctic.
  • Main tasks of the collection include expanding it with new strains and type cultures, characterizing strains, and distributing microorganisms for research and education.

    • Services Offered

  • The CELMS offers the following services: identification and deposition of microbial strains, delivery of deposited strains, and consulting.

    • Research

    CELMS is connected to ongoing research at the Chair of Genetics at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of Tartu. The main research activities focus on the use of biochemical and molecular methods to characterize microbial strains and the diversity of functional genes. Information on cultures is available online at  https://eemb.ut.ee/eng/celms_english_introduction_list.php.