At the Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute (previously CBS-KNAW), more than 100,000 living strains of yeasts and filamentous fungi are preserved.
More...At the Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute (previously CBS-KNAW), more than 100,000 living strains of yeasts and filamentous fungi are preserved. Information of the publically available strains such as morphological, physiological, molecular, or any additional data that are relevant to work safely and correctly with the strains, are easily accessible via the website www.westerdijkinstitute.nl. The CBS filamentous fungal collection currently has approximately 70,000 strains including ca. 8,000 ex-type strains representing more than 12,000 currently recognized species, with the oldest strains deposited in 1908. Strain identification is normally achieved with the knowledge and methods available at the time of accession. While taxon names of strains other than ex-type strains are updated following modern taxonomic concepts, it has not been possible to re-evaluate the original identification of each strain in the CBS collection for various reasons. For most of the older strains, not all characters necessary for identification are expressed in culture or modern molecular studies have not been conducted to date. The CBS sequencing project is aimed at generating barcode data from two loci ITS and LSU for all strains included in the collection, 1) to validate these barcodes and (re-)assess strain identity, 2) to enhance the value of the collection and 3) to make these data publicly available. In a previous work, we have released over 8,700 sequences of ~4,700 yeast strains that belong to ~1,400 accepted species. In this study, we aim to release over 24,000 sequences of ~15,000 manually validated filamentous fungal strains that belong to ~6500 accepted species for fungal identification.
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