Genomic Analyses and Management of Agricultural and Industrial Microbial Genetic Resources and Associated Information

The major goals of this project are to enhance the quality, diversity, and utility of the ARS Culture Collection holdings, including the strains held in the ARS Patent Culture Collection, and to conduct and support microbiological research that advances agricultural production, food safety, public health, and economic development. The project is designed to simplify and improve public access to well-characterized microbial strains, expand accessions associated with ARS priority research in food safety and animal health, and enhance the information content associated with accessions through comparative genomic and targeted multilocus sequence analyses of diversity and evolutionary relationships. This project is also designed to leverage the expertise and information developed from two current NP108 - Food Safety projects within the Bacterial Foodborne Pathogens and Mycology Research Unit. The genetic, phenotypic, and taxonomic information generated from the proposed research will be combined with data generated through the NP108 projects in web-accessible strain databases that enhance the utility of the collection and facilitate strain selection by the end-users. Objective 1: Safeguard (including backing-up) priority microbial genetic resources and associated information from the ARS Culture Collection in state-of-the-art genebanks. Objective 2: Identify gaps in the ARS Culture Collection's coverage of microbial genetic resources of national importance and programmatic interest to ARS, and acquire the latter. Objective 3: Conduct comparative genomic, phylogenetic, and taxonomic analyses of strains in the ARS Culture Collection, especially for actinobacteria. Objective 4: Improve ARS Culture Collection's database management to enhance inventory control, enable researchers to identify desired strains, and facilitate fulfillment of customer requests for germplasm. Enable researchers to conduct gene searches from microbial sequence databases to determine taxonomic identification and phylogenetic position of unknown samples and strains.