Find Strains, Plasmids, and Genes

Reminder: Always revive new organisms according to an established protocol and archive a lab stock of the original freeze-dried culture after it has been resuspended, in addition to the initial culture, and cultures from picked colonies.

General culture collections

• American Type Culture Collection (ATCC)
  • Note: ATCC is usually much more expensive than other sources.
  • See the ATCC Bacterial Preceptrol Cultures for the most economical cultures.
• German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures (DSMZ)
• UK National Collection of Industrial Food and Marine Bacteria (NCIMB)
• USDA Agricultural Research Service Culture Collection (NRLL)
• Culture Collections Information Worldwide (WDCM)
  This is a database of culture collections from all over the world.

Strain collections for specific species

• E. coli Genetic Stock Center

Plasmid collections

• Addgene
  Most common source for published plasmids.
• Registry of Standard Biological Parts
  We have the iGEM distributions from 2012 and 2014–present.
• Standard European Vector Architecture 2.0 (SEVA)
  Similar to iGEM repository, but uses a different standard that allows backbone elements (like the origin) to vary.

Advice for choosing strains

• Whenever possible, choose a strain that has a complete genome sequence available. You can check by searching on the NCBI Genome Page. After you do a search, be sure to click on the link by "Organism Overview ; Genome Assembly and Annotation report [XXXX]" to see a table of all XXXX of the genomes with sequencing data. Ideally, you want ones with a level of "complete".