Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences is awarded a grant to establish two new marine culture collections. They plan to organize these collections with the existing Provasoli-Guillard National Center for Culture of Marine Phytoplankton (CCMP) to utilize the collections infrastructure of the CCMP. They request funds to purchase the equipment necessary to house, maintain these culture collections to establish quality control policies, and for identifying the culture strains. Bigelow Laboratory and the (CCMP) have demonstrated that they can operate a large and highly used marine algal culture collection. Bigelow Laboratory is an outstanding site for these collections because of its many scientists who are dedicated to marine research on microscopic organisms, it is situated on the Gulf of Maine, and it has 27 years of experience successfully operating the CCMP.
Broader Impacts:
Cultures of marine archaea, bacteria, and viruses will be made available to researchers, saving them time and expense to obtain the organisms from the oceans of the world. In addition, the Bigelow Laboratory offers courses, workshops, and internships for high school and college students, and attempts to interest the general public in their research.
