GREAT AT SMALL THINGS
Belgian Research in EuropeThe 2016 edition of the « Belgian Research in Europe » Journal comprises an interview of Pr Stephan Declerck: « A mycotheque in the mycology laboratory at the Université catholique de Louvain – Developing fungal resources », page 91.
Success story of the mycology laboratory managed by Pr Declerck:after ten years of research, a licence agreement should be concluded soon with an important Belgian industrialist.
BCCM publishes its first electronic newsletter that is available here.
Service in the picture: A new identification service for filamentous fungi
Biomaterial in the picture: Human ORFeome v8.1 entry plasmids
Project in the picture: PERN, more than just another website
Dr. Fabien Borderie has joined the team of BCCM/ULC in November 2015 to study the diversity of UV-sunscreen pigments in the polar cyanobacterial strains of the public collection. He has obtained a 2-years post-doctoral fellowship cofounded by the University of Liège thanks to the Federal subsidies for research and the FP7 people Marie Curie COFUND.
Moidons Cave (France)
From 27th till 29th of October, The European Forum for Industrial Biotechnology and the Bioeconomy took take place in Brussels.
EFIB is THE market leading annual event in Europe for Industrial Biotechnology and the Bioeconomy, where delegates are provided with an update on the status and outlook of biobased industries.
A BCCM booth was present!
The meeting of 2016 will take place in Glasgow.
More info : http://www.efibforum.com/
Escherichia coli DB3.1 used to be the gold standard as a host for vectors containing the ccdB gene, such as Gateway® Donor and Destination vectors. Unfortunately, the strain was discontinued by Invitrogen and replaced by the One Shot ® ccdB Survival strain, for which the transformation efficiency is plasmid-dependent.
Some time ago, BCCM decided to switch to a common IT- platform to support and centralize the daily internal operations of the different entities belonging to the BCCM consortium.
Siemens was selected as the partner for the implementation.
Unilab LIMS integrates both the administrative data (client database, customer orders, stock, delivery notes, ...) and the scientific data (strain information, performed analyses,...) and supports the ISO 9001 quality system.
In May 2015 AIB Vinçotte has audited the quality management system (QMS) of the BCCM consortium. The auditors found the QMS well understood, applied and developed by all staff members. They praised the way that BCCM declines its general objectives into well defined activities that are regularly followed up. They did not detect any non-conformity, but they have proposed 12 opportunities for further improvement of the QMS. As a result, the ISO 9001:2008 certificate was prolonged.
The BCCM consortium has joined the Global Genome Biodiversity Network (GGBN) as observer member. The GGBN is a global network of well-managed collections of genomic tissue samples from across the Tree of Life, benefiting society through biodiversity research, development and conservation. The BCCM collections offer their microbial strains also as genomic DNA samples, and want to share their experiences with other colleagues in the genomics field.
Millions of microbial taxa inhabit the rhizosphere and could be used as biofertilizers, biopesticides, and/or for bioremediation. Only a fraction of these microbes have been described and/or are being utilized. Most are dispersed in collections, but coordination of their accessibility and availability is challenging. Here, we present the Pan-European Rhizosphere Resource Network (PERN), which is a transnational repository of microorganisms whose objectives are to facilitate access to rhizosphere resources and information and help users with technical and legal issues.
