Objective
The Biotechnology program of the Commission of the European Communities includes among others the coordination of bioresource centers (8.2.: Genetic Archives and Stock Centres). It proposes that the build up of laboratory networks should lead to infrastructures and logistics for a more extensive and efficient use of biological resources. The collections of organisms as well as genetic information like libraries, isolated clones or sequences of certain genes have to be made accessible to the scientific community. This proposal is tailored to achieve all these objectives using a specific group of symbiotic funghi in the Glomales (arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi - AMF), which are critical to the growth and development of many plants in natural and agro-ecosystems but which cannot be cultured alone on synthetic medium and must be maintained on living host tissues (whole plants or root organ cultures). Little is known about non-culturable fungi, but AMF are believed to be the most ubiquitous group of soil fungi. The BEG-Net will focus on these non-culturable fungi which will serve as a model for future European, as opposed to National, collections, of economically important non-culturable microorganisms. This project will build on work carried out under COST 8.10/8.21 initiatives on Arbuscular Mycorrhizas which has led to the establishment of the BEG (La Banque Europeenne des Glomales) to register cultures of AMF, used in European research. They are registered in a database which allocates a serial code number to each pure isolate of AMF (BEG -) and allows information on the isolates to be collated. Living cultures are also maintained and some of the most frequently used are made available within a "Stock Centre without walls" framework. About 200 AM fungal isolates representing 6070 of the currently described species are maintained as nearly 1000 pot cultures by several European laboratories some of which are freely available (see BEG on WWW -http://www.ukc.ac.uk/biolab/ beg/index.html). A demonstration Expert System on CD-ROM has been developed to aid identification,,, teaching and awareness of these fungi and a second version will be a part of the project. The BEG has developed with minimal funding to date and is organized by a small executive committee. To get the utmost benefit from the culture collection it is necessary to have access to diagnostic characters. This will enable the users of the collection to keep track of the cultures, but will also be a necessary tool for the user to follow introduced fungi in experimentation. Molecular methods have been established to build up genomic and cDNA libraries, as well as for the analysis of gene expression on transcript and protein levels, but has only been realized for a small sample of AMF. Development money is now needed to enlarge the established techniques for culture conservation and molecular diagnosis to more AMF, and to include this new information into the BEG database. As a new method for facilitated maintenance, in in-vitro root organ cultures of AMF should be built up. These actions would create a stable self-sustaining infrastructure including genetic archives and stock centres which can function under the same framework into the next century, helping to serve the European research efforts in plant biotechnology, plant micro-propagation, sustainable plant production and plant/microbial interactions. We intend to make links with the CABRI (Common Access to Biological Resources Information) information network which is just beginning (BIOTECH funded). Our other objectives will be to strengthen the links between research groups and small biotechnology companies to pursue the aim of exploiting this natural biotechnological resource. There have been at least 3 failed attempts at commercializing inoculum in the US and EU caused by a lack of quality control and scientific information useful in predicting where inoculants would be most succcessful. The training and mobility of young scientists will be an important facet of the action involving several inter-laboratory visits.
The aim of establishing a fully functional Stock Centre Culture Collection and Genetic Archive will ultimately allow time for the development of future multi-disciplinary research-based projects where work is facilitated by the availability of a well-maintained and characterised collection.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdatabases
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculesproteins
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologymycology
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligenceexpert systems
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Topic(s)
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CON - Coordination of research actionsCoordinator
CT2 7VW Canterbury - Kent
United Kingdom