Maintenance of the ATCC Collection of Living Fungi

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The scientific community has, since 1925, recognized the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) in Rockville, Maryland, as a symbol of top quality in providing living fungus cultures for use in education, research and development. The quality and the resulting scientific confidence have been achieved after a long, continuous and substantial effort by scientists throughout the world. It is the only general service collection of living fungi (including yeasts) in the United States, consisting of over 23,000 strains representing more than 6,000 species. During the last five years, a total of 3,767 strains were accessioned and 35,039 cultures were distributed. As a national resource center, the collection's functions include not only the accessioning, preservation, authentication, and distribution of reference and type cultures, but also the creation and manipulation of data files for each culture maintained. It also acts as an information clearing house in all the disciplines of mycology by disseminating information pertaining to the availability of strains, nomenclature, classification, characterization, preservation techniques, and applications of fungus cultures to the study and solution of human problems involving food, energy, health and environmental pollution. In compliance with the ATCC constitution set forth by the Board of Trustees, which represents over 100,000 professionals in the life sciences, the fungal culture collection will continue to pursue the ATCC mission of bringing into the collection all named fungal taxa as well as strains of scientific significance to contemporary research, particularly to biotechnology, and enhancing the quality of acquisitions and the efficiency of services associated with the collection. This award provides a partial operational subsidy to the ATCC for its service functions to the national and international fungal research community.