-CBS and NCCB-

Member holdings

The Westerdijk Institute maintains the CBS Collection of yeasts and filamentous fungi, which was established as a public collection in 1904 and at present holds a very broad coverage of culturable filamentous fungi, yeasts and oomycetes. The CBS Collection comprises a total of 100 000 strains, representing 5100 genera, 19 600 species, and 12 600 type strains. The institute also maintains the Netherlands Culture Collection of Bacteria (NCCB), including 10 000 strains of wildtype bacteria and E.coli mutants, actinobacteria (accessioned under the CBS acronym), and over 500 plasmids and phages. Scientific and other data associated with these strains (including DNA barcode sequences of most of the CBS and NCCB strains) are maintained in databases and the information of publicly available strains are visible online.

Services offered

  • Supply of living cultures or genomic DNA extracts
  • Deposit of cultures in the public collections
  • Deposit of cultures in the closed collection as safe- or patent deposits
  • Identification, freeze-drying on demand, isolation from mixed cultures
  • Databases with information on the cultures, including data on provenance, published DNA sequences, data on physiology, literature references, and links from strain to names in MycoBank with information on the current species, and synonyms

Research

  • Phylogeny and taxonomy, DNA barcoding, morphology, and nomenclature of filamentous fungi and yeasts
  • Collection staff collaborates in various projects with the Westerdijk Institute research groups, which focus on yeast research, applied & industrial mycology, medical mycology, phytopathology, fungal physiology, fungal natural products, bioinformatics, software development and databasing.

Quality Management System

The Westerdijk BRC is ISO 9001:2015 certified. The certificate covers the accession, preservation, storage and supply of microorganisms or their DNA (public deposits, safe deposits and patent deposits) and related information.