This award supports the E. coli Genetic Stock Center (CGSC) at Yale University. Escherichia coli is an important model organism and is perhaps the best understood cellular organism from a genetics and biochemistry standpoint. This high degree of understanding has made E. coli not just an important subject of research, but also the laboratory workhorse for studying a broad variety of organisms as well as an invaluable tool for biotechnology. The mission of the CGSC is to act as a central repository for genetically modified strains of E. coli created by the research community, so that they may be readily available to other researchers and educators. To that end, the CGSC maintains a collection of ~28,000 cultures of genetically defined derivatives of E. coli K-12. There are over 8,000 different mutations represented in this strain collection with verified mutations in over 90% of the 4,111 identified genes in the sequenced E. coli K-12 genome. These cultures are distributed to researchers and educators in the US and over 65 countries worldwide. In addition to the distribution of cultures, the CGSC is also an information resource, and provides information about strains, mutations, genes, gene products and genetic maps, in a fully searchable database on the web. Importantly CGSC also acts as a source of expert information and advice for those researchers who have questions about using the E. coli strains in the collection.
The CGSC will continue to maintain and expand its publicly available database on strain genotypes, phenotypes, histories and pedigrees, which is unique to the Stock Center. Information systems will be upgraded to more seamlessly integrate with other E. coli web resources, including the EcoliWiki project, EcoGene and EcoCyc. The CGSC is collaborating with other international culture collection databases such as StrainInfo and the World Data Centre for Microorganisms (WDCM) so that the collection can be indexed by these global strain databases. Over the period of this award, capabilities will be expanded to distribute large systematic strain sets, which are useful for users interested in genomic and proteomic research. Strain construction services will be offered for those users who require a genetically modified strain, but lack the capability of constructing it themselves, particularly to those outside of the traditional bacterial genetics community. Access to the strain collection database, including genotypes, gene function and map location, as well as an extensive bibliography are available at (http://cgsc.biology.yale.edu/).
