GREAT AT SMALL THINGS

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BCCM/LMG Bacteria Collection

 

BCCM/LMG is a bacterial culture collection currently comprising over 26.000 well-characterized strains. The biological origin of our collection is very broad, including bacterial isolates from food, clinical, veterinary, agricultural, aquatic and other environmental sources. This way, the biological resources of BCCM/LMG may serve the needs of various R&D sectors, including green, red, blue and white biotechnology.

 

Embedding

BCCM/LMG is embedded in the Laboratory of Microbiology, Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology, Faculty of Sciences of Ghent University, a research team internationally renowned for its contributions to the description of new bacterial biodiversity and improvement of bacterial taxonomy.

The LMG Bacteria Collection was one of the founding partners of the Belgian Coordinated Collections of Microorganisms (BCCM) in 1983, and has since grown to become one of the largest and well-known Biological Resource Centres (BRCs) specialized in bacteria worldwide. It receives an excellent international recognition as repository of important groups of bacteria and for its strong expertise in bacterial characterization.

Research projects autonomously developed by BCCM/LMG staff or in collaboration with research groups of the host laboratory are largely focussed on a polyphasic approach (using complementary molecular characterization) aiming at the phylogenetic study, identification and typing, and functional characterization of various bacterial groups, in the frame of:

  • Assessing culturable microbial diversity in a wide range of environments
  • Bioprospecting
  • Food bacteriology: process contaminants, spoilers and (functional) starter cultures (with emphasis on lactic acid bacteria and acetic acid bacteria)

In addition, we are continuously exploring advanced methods and new approaches for identification, typing, characterization and preservation of bacteria in the frame of service analyses, distributions and deposits.

 

Scope of the biological material

The bacterial resources available for distribution include lyophilised cultures and, on request, their purified genomic DNA extracts.

The strategic acquisition policy of BCCM/LMG has resulted in a number of well-documented subcollections that offer invaluable resources for new applications and innovations in the green, red, blue and white biotechnology.

Major subcollections available for distribution to industry and academics include:

  • Various groups of specific interest to agriculture and food production (e.g. lactic acid bacteria, bifidobacteria, acetic acid bacteria, N2 fixing strains and Bacillus)
  • Plant-associated and phytopathogenic bacteria (e.g. pseudomonads, xanthomonads, erwiniae, agrobacteria and coryneforms)
  • Bacteria of clinical or veterinary relevance (e.g. Arcobacter, Campylobacter, Helicobacter, Aeromonas, flavobacteria, bordetellae, enterococci, streptococci)
  • Marine bacteria (Vibrionaceae)
  • Test, control and bioassay strains
  • BCCM/LMG also distributes the complete experimental strain panel of the Burkholderia cepacia complex.

 

Quality

BCCM/LMG is ISO 9001:2015 certified for accession, control, preservation, storage and supply of biological material and related information in the frame of public deposits, safe deposits and patent deposits.

 

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