The Informatics, Coordination, and Service Center (ICSC) at UC Davis facilitates the organization and activities of the entire multi-site Mutant Mouse Resource and Research Centers (MMRRC) in its mission to cryopreserve and distribute genetically engineered mouse strains and mouse ES cell lines for the global biomedical research community. The ICSC accomplishes this goal through a single, centralized set of public and internal services. Publicly, these services present the MMRRC as a unified entity, greatly simplifying brand recognition, the processes of donating and ordering repository materials, and access to documentation supporting best practices with the research materials. This is achieved through the public MMRRC.org web portal with its on line donation, product catalog, and ordering systems as well as a centralized customer service center and a community outreach and marketing program. Internally, the ICSC provides the organizational backbone for all five MMRRC centers. This is accomplished through the hosting of regular teleconferences, the centralized biological annotation of all repository holdings, the archiving of all consortium documentation, and the maintenance of a comprehensive database of all repository holdings and donation and ordering system activity. This application seeks to both maintain the existing ICSC services as well as extend them for the continued and increased benefit of the MMRRC and the global community of researchers whom it serves. In order to meet these goals, we propose the following specific aims: (1) Organize and participate in monthly teleconferences of the MMRRC-CC; (2) Follow the guidelines developed by the MMRRC-CC; (3) Maintain a customer service center and public relations division; (4) Review and process applications from donating investigators; (5) Provide a free, public web site; (6) Provide an order processing system; (7) Provide a central database 8) Provide maintain a secure electronic archive of MMRRC documents; and (9) Develop and maintain methods for comprehensive summary statistics of the progress of the MMRRC project and marketing efforts. The ICSC at UC Davis is willing and capable of continuing the ICSC program. Our group has a highly respected team of informaticians, customer service, and marketing staff with knowledge and experience in mouse biology, transgenics, mutagenesis, embryonic stem (ES) cell biology, cryobiology, genetics, and phenotyping. These same staff have also been integral to the MBP program's internal and external services, the Knockout Mouse Project (KOMP) repository, the KOMP2 Production and Phenotyping programs, the UC Davis MMRRC repository, and the International Gene Trap Consortium (IGTC).
Since acquiring the ICSC program in 2011, the ICSC at UCD has made significant improvements to both public and internal MMRRC services by enhancing the customers' ability to search, identify, and stratify candidate animal models for their research by improving timeliness and extensiveness of product information, by reducing customer service response times and expanding customer service system knowledge, by providing more ergonomic ordering and donation processes, and by significantly broadening the awareness of MMRRC holdings and services within the research community. The current ICSC's expertise and experience make it particularly well suited to maintain and extend services for the entire MMRRC consortium throughout the next project period.
