Improvement of the Museum of Southwestern Biology

这个在过去几年中开发的冷冻组织收藏已经成为世界上同类组织中最大的。它是一个藏品，虽然主要由哺乳动物样本组成，但也收藏了西南生物博物馆内所有分部的冷冻组织和其他辅助材料。几个大型的、活跃的研究项目利用了这种广泛的收集。随着新的分析技术的出现和新基因材料在全球日益稀有，国家和国际用户对信息和样本的要求急剧增加。提炼这种资源将使其对科学更加有用。西南生物学博物馆(MSB)是墨西哥大学生物系的研究和教学设施，收藏着来自世界各地的脊椎动物、节肢动物和植物的重要收藏品。MSB的生物材料部门收藏了从冷冻组织到植物、节肢动物、鱼类、两栖动物、爬行动物、鸟类和哺乳动物的细胞悬浮液等各种低温保存的样本。该藏品中的哺乳动物部分是世界上最大的。这些藏品的快速增长，同时分子生物学的出现和它在系统学中的广泛应用推动了用户需求的极大增加，为该部门创造了一些有趣的策展需求。该项目将支持解决其中一些最紧迫的问题。具体地说，该项目将完成对该司储存的所有样本的电子数据采集(包括对当前进入的样品以及其他自然历史收藏中凭证存放在异地的样品的维护和数据采集)；2)完全核实从凭证标本收集的数据库中采集的样品的数据；3)对照凭证标本目录核实生物材料采集中的物种识别；以及，四)升级数据库管理程序，使其可通过万维网访问。所有上述目标将大大增强为广大用户社区服务的能力，使该司能够弥补其积压的数据收集工作，并促进该数据库和其他MSB数据库之间的联网活动，特别是那些包含主要凭单信息的数据库。

This collection of frozen tissues developed during the past several years has become the largest of its kind in the world. It is a collection that, although primarily composed of mammalian samples, houses frozen tissue and other ancillary materials from all divisions within the Museum of Southwestern Biology. Several large, active research projects make use of this extensive collection. National and international user-based requests for information and samples have increased dramatically with the advent of new analytical techniques and the increasing global rarity of novel genetic material. Refining this resource would make it much more useful to science. The Museum of Southwestern Biology (MSB) is a research and teaching facility in the Department of Biology,University of Mexico, housing important collections of vertebrates, arthropods, and plants from around the world. The Division of Biological Materials of the MSB houses collections of cryogenically preserved samples ranging from frozen tissues to cell suspensions of plants, arthropods, fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. The mammalian portion of the collection is the largest in the world. The rapid growth of these collections, in parallel with an extreme increase in user demands fueled by the emergence of molecular biology and its broadening use in systematics have created some interesting curatorial demands for the division. This project will support the resolution of some of the most pressing of these problems. Specifically, the project will complete the electronic data capture for all samples stored in the division (including maintenance and data capture for currently incoming samples as well as samples whose vouchers are held off-site in other natural history collections); II) Complete verification of data captured samples on the database resulting from voucher specimens; III) Verify species identifications in the Biological Materials collection against voucher specimen catalogues; and, IV) Upgrade the database management program to be accessible via World-Wide Web.All the foregoing objective will greatly enhance the ability to serve the user community at large, to allow the division to catch up on its backlog of data capture, and facilitate networking activities among this and other MSB databases, especially those containing the primary voucher information.biologybiology and its