News

We are very pleased to announce that the XLII European Culture Collections’ Organisation (ECCO) meeting will be held in the amazing city of Bari (Apulia region, Southern Italy), from 18 to 20 September 2024. The ECCO meeting is organised by the Institute of Sciences of Food Production of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR-ISPA) and sponsored by the CNR-ISPA Agri-food Microbial Culture Collection (ITEM), and the International Society on Mycotoxicology. The meeting will be focused on the study, management and valorisation of Microbe & Microbiome, as biological resources, and bio-systems crucial tools for a better understanding of biological systems, to support quality of life and promote the transition towards a better planet. The conference promotes a holistic and integrated approach on the value of microbial resources and Microbial Biological Research Centers (mBRCs): i) to support basic and applied transdisciplinary sciences, ii) as resilience factors to deal with global changes and sustainable development, and iii) to promote human and animal health in the framework of a OneHealth perspective. For more information and to register visit the meeting website: www.eccomeeting2024.org

The Future is Fungi Award honors frontier and cutting-edge science and innovation on how to use fungi for the environmental solutions that the world needs.Are you ready to lead the way?   Learn more at www.futureisfungi.org!  The application period is open from on September 5th until October the 15th. The winner will receive EUR 10 000 + mentorship + access to a broad network and visibility Let us accelerate the fungi revolution together!

Dear colleagues, We are pleased to inform you that registration for the new edition of the MOOC on biobanking is open and completely free. The MOOC is recorded in English, with French and Spanish subtitles. It will be broadcasted from March 15, 2023, until May 17, 2023.  Once registered, the videos remain available after the end of the broadcasting, which means that you can follow the MOOC at your own pace. Bringing together some of the leading experts in the field of biobanking, this MOOC will help you to: – Understand how to build a biobank of high-quality samples – Know how to make a biobank “alive” through distribution of samples to the scientific community – Be aware of the ethics, regulatory aspects, and quality behind distribution – Understand uses and applications of biobanks Registration link and more information

In 2023 CCAP will once again be delivering their annual CCAP CPD course online, via MS Teams. The course is aimed at students, technicians, early career researchers, industry professionals and algae enthusiasts. The course will run on Tuesday 18th and Wednesday 19th April 2023 from 9:00 to 16:45 GMT each day, a fee of £50 will be charged to cover costs. The  course will focus on microalgae; CCAP’s host institute, the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) has recently opened the Seaweed Academy, which offers training in macroalgae and the seaweed industry with input from CCAP. Link: https://www.ccap.ac.uk/index.php/algaculture-for-biotechnology-online-training-course/

One of the co-founders and first president of ECCO has passed away. She died on the 27th of January, at the age of 93. We owe the very existence of ECCO to visionary scientists like Barbara Kirsop. Joined by a small group of colleague curators, she set up an informal scientific and technical discussion forum, “European Culture Collection Curators’ Organization” (ECCCO), for which its first meeting was held in 1982 in Göttingen, Germany, hosted by the DSM. Having been the curator of NCYC (Norwich, UK) for many years, Barbara recognized the importance of stimulating exchange of experiences and expertise between service collection curators across Europe in a time when scientific cooperation between the east and west was far from easy. In 1983 Barbara was elected as first ECCCO chairman, and soon after that of the more formal European Culture Collections Organization (ECCO) into which it evolved. She later also served as President of the board for WFCC (World Federation for Culture Collections) for two consecutive terms. At the 1996 WFCC Conference held in Veldhoven (The Netherlands) Barbara and Dieter Klaus were both honoured with Honorary Life Membership of the organisation, and gifted with gingko trees, the gingko leaf being the symbol of WFCC’s longevity. Barbara kept her gingko tree alive in her garden, as memorial to Dieter, as a great and international scientist. An honest, kind and sensitive man who worked for all that was right for the development of culture collections. The same attention given to the WFCC gingko tree in her garden was devoted to WFCC partners all over the world, always sharing the news of the family joy. In January 2021 she contacted the ECCO board to express her concerns about the effects the UK leaving the EU could have on the European culture collection community and in particular the participation of UK collections within ECCO. She was obviously very worried about this, showing how very close the fate of ECCO still was to her heart! The ECCO board of course tried to convince her that from the viewpoint of ECCO we would stay the same family, and we can only hope that this response provided reassurance for her. ECCO owes a great deal to Barbara and we are deeply thankful for the way she has contributed to building the culture collection community, in Europe and beyond. Barbara was a stout advocate for culture collections at the National, Regional and Global levels.  As an active member of the UK Federation for Culture Collections, amongst many endeavours, she taught on the UKFCC training courses as well as organizing many of them. This course ran successfully for many years, so much so that one of the International participants, Maija-Liisa Suihko, (then of VTT and several years later a serving officer of ECCO) asked Barbara and her UKFCC colleagues to take the course to Finland in 1984. Conversations at dinner varied, sometimes intense, microbiology of course but they also focussed on life and getting the best out of it. Barbara’s first visit to Brazil in 1986 as president of WFCC, was followed by the implementation of a training program to support the establishment of the Brazilian network of microbial collections. With her continuous support to raise funds from the British Council and the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology, about 50 training courses and international events focused on the management and computerization of culture collections were held. Barbara fought, supported by colleagues of the World Federation for Culture Collections, to ensure microorganisms were considered appropriately in the Convention on Biological Diversity. She commented “A number of uncertainties exist at the microbial level and there is a lack of awareness of the role played by microorganisms in ecosystem function.” Going on to say “specialist microbiological input into the debate is required to ensure that provisions made for national programmes are appropriate and practicable at the microbiological level” (Kirsop, 1996). The article” Who is….Santiago Moure” published by Barbara in the Biologist (2007) is a masterpiece that  shows her capacity to tell stories and her fascination for the natural world, linking biodiversity data, microbial taxonomy, international collaboration and open access to scientific information. Barbara´s enthusiasm for biodiversity data sharing, open access and open science was a major source of inspiration for the establishment of speciesLink (https://specieslink.net/) an open access network for the delivery of biodiversity data on samples held in biological collections. Today speciesLink integrates in a dynamic way more than 500 data sets with records of over 15 million samples and nearly 5 million images of microorganisms, plants, and animals collected in Brazil and other South American countries. Barbara worked with many researchers across the culture collection world and helped share the information that would ensure all microbiologists could maintain their cultures in good condition and that they were aware of the work of culture collections and the services they delivered. Individual microbiologists and Curators, Culture Collection Organisations (UKFCC, ECCO, WFCC) and participants of many training courses and conferences have benefited from her good humour and wisdom. While in the 1980´s she had a key role in the establishment of microbial collections and collaborative networks in different regions of the world, after her “formal retirement” from the culture collections world in the 1990´s she became a champion of open access to and free flow of scientific information in developing countries. She was one of the founders of the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development and Bioline International (http://www.bioline.org.br/) a not-for-profit scholarly publishing cooperative. While CRIA (Reference Center on Environmental Information , Brazil) is responsible for the development and maintenance of Bioline´s system, the University of Toronto is responsible for the content management. In 2021, the average number of downloads of complete articles was 1.3 million per month. Celebrating 20 years of Bioline with Barbara, Dora Canhos, Sidnei de Souza, Vanderlei Canhos, and Leslie Chan, at CRIA in Brazil (2013) The vídeo of celebration of 20 years of  Bioline with Barbara Kirsop is available at :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OhdZFZ9x0w Our thoughts and condolences go out to the staff of NCYC and all who were privileged to work with her.  We are thankful for the contributions to this tribute provided by David Smith and Vanderlei Canhos. Some selected Publications Brown, M. L. & Kirsop, B. (1972) Production of yeast mass during fermentation of wort by brewery yeasts. Journal of the Institute of Brewing 78, 39-42. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2050-0416.1972.tb03427.x Hawksworth, D.L. & Kirsop, B.E. (eds) (1988).  Living Resources for Biotechnology: Filamentous Fungi.  209pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kirsop, B. Yeast identification. Nature 283, 799–800 (1980). https://doi.org/10.1038/283799b0 Kirsop, B.E. (1983).  Culture collections: microbiological resource centres.  Biologist 30, 139-143. Kirsop, B.E. The Convention on Biological Diversity: Some implications for microbiology and microbial culture collections. Journal of Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology 17, 505–511 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01574782 Kirsop, B. (2013) The stability of biochemical, morphological and brewing properties of yeast cultures maintained by sub-culturing and freeze‐drying. Journal of the Institute of Brewing, 80, 6, 565-570. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2050-0416.1974.tb03650.x Kirsop, B.E. & DaSilva, E.J. (1988).  Organization of resource centres. In: Living Resources for Biotechnology: FilamentousFungi (edited by D.L Hawksworth and B.E. Kirsop) pp 173-187.  Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Kirsop, B.E. & Hawksworth, D.L. (eds) (1994) The biodiversity of microorganisms and the role of microbial resource centres.  Braunschweig, Germany: World Federation for Culture Collections. Kirsop, B.E. & Krutzman, C.P. (eds.) (1988).  Living Resources for Biotechnology: Yeasts, 234 pp.,  Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Kirsop, B.E. & Doyle, A. (eds) (1991).  Maintenance of Microorganisms and Cultured Cells:  A Manual of Laboratory Methods, London: Academic Press. Kirsop, B.E. & Snell, J.J.S. (eds) (1984).  Maintenance of Microorganisms, London: Academic Press. Sly, L.I. & Kirsop, B. (1990).  100 years of culture collections.  Proceedings of the Kral Symposium to celebrate the centenary of the first recorded service culture collection.  Osaka, Japan: Institute of Fermentation, Osaka. Kirsop, B. & Sneath, P H. A. (2008) The Current Status of Culture Collections and Their Contribution to Biotechnology. Critical Reviews in Biotechnology 2, 287-314. https://doi.org/10.3109/07388558409084662 Kirsop, B (2007) Open Acess and Developing Countries. Current Science 93, 276-277.     https://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/92/03/0276.pdf Kirsop, B.(2007) Who is ….Santiago Moure? Biologist 54, 224-227

17 September is International Microorganism Day, an opportunity to promote the diversity and variety of microorganisms and a way to encourage everyone to recognize and celebrate the many ways microscopic organisms are important in human health, culture and, throughout our daily lives. International Microorganism Day is an annual celebration of microbiology and this year the Federation of European Microbiological Societies (FEMS) wants to promote the positive contributions of microorganisms in our daily lives given the negative stories associated with viruses in the news.

Venue & Date Programs Presentations Social Poster . . Presentation Dear Colleagues, The European Culture Collections’ Organisation (ECCO) and the consortium of Russian collections of microorganisms invite you to the XXXVII ECCO meeting to be held in Moscow 13-15 September, 2018. The success of previous ECCO meetings demonstrates that personal contacts among the active professionals from culture collections are of great importance for exchanging best practices in this field and are not replaceable by the modern technical communication tools.Activities related to culture collections are multifaceted. Microorganisms are in the focus of attention. Culturing of previously non-culturable microorganisms and gaining insight into microbial associations change our perception of them from a “thing-in-itself” to a “thing-for-us”. Cultivable microorganisms and microbiomes should be studied and preserved with minimal losses to provide different customers with standard high-quality biomaterials. Culture collections, having the status of Core Facilities, are expected to follow the commonly accepted and approved practices in biosafety, biosecurity and legitimate transfer of genetic resources. The ways to achieve these goals will be discussed at the XXXVII ECCO 2018 meeting. The meeting will follow the spirit and style of the previous ECCO meetings. . . Organizers, sponsors, collaborators . .

Venue & Date Programs Presentations Social Poster . . Presentation We are proud to announce the next ECCO meeting that will be held in Aberdeen, Scotland between the 2nd and the 4th of November 2016.