[en] The BCCM/ULC public collection presently includes 72 Antarctic cyanobacterial strains and its catalogue is available on http://bccm.belspo.be/db/ulc_search_form.php. An ISO9001 certificate was obtained for the public deposition and distribution of strains.
The purpose of this collection is to gather a representative sample of Antarctic cyanobacterial diversity from different biotopes (limnetic microbial mats, soil crusts, cryoconites, endoliths, etc.) and make it available for researchers to study the diversity, evolution, physiology, and genomic make-up. This is particularly important in view of the emerging use of metagenomic approaches on environmental samples, where the comparison with well-defined strain genome sequences can be very useful.
