This award renews support for operation of the Protistology Collection of the American Type Culture Collection. The collection conserves and distributes a comprehensive range of authenticated protozoa, algae and associated strain data for use in research and education. The collection presently maintains approximately 2150 strains of protozoa representing over 300 genera and approximately 700 species and, in addition, 219 strains of algae representing 66 genera and roughly 100 species. In recent years, the Collection has provided an average of 1500 cultures each year at a modest charge to users. The intellectual merit of this project lies in the characterization of new strains of protists so that new, as well as existing, well-characterized protest strains are available to users The broader impact of this project is to expand the holdings of Protistology Collection in a targeted fashion to provide useful and scientifically relevant living stocks of protists to qualified users.
