CSBR: Living Stocks, Operation of a Culture Collection of Algae

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Algae are essential primary producers that profoundly affect the global environment, ecology, and economy. The Culture Collection of Algae at the University of Texas at Austin (UTEX) is one of only a handful of large biodiversity collections of living algae. UTEX maintains more than 3,000 distinct algal strains and is among the most genetically diverse assemblages of living organisms available to the public. Many of the algae in the UTEX Collection are unique and irreplaceable. UTEX distributes thousands of living algal cultures to scientists, educators, and students throughout the U.S. and the world. Great interest in algae as sources of transportation fuels, human food, animal feed, pharmaceuticals, and many other uses makes UTEX cultures and services essential resources for researchers. Every year, several hundred published research articles, many of which recognize NSF support, reference the use of UTEX strains. UTEX provides extensive student training, hands-on workshops on managing algal cultures, an informative interactive web site (https://utex.org/), species identification services, chemical composition analysis, and extensive correspondence with students engaged in algal research. UTEX personnel give presentations at public schools, conduct tours of UTEX facilities, assist teachers and students in conducting high school science projects, and provide presentations on the scientific importance of algae to hundreds of school children at local open house events.UTEX is a public resource whose mission is to promote, support, and enable the use of algae for research, education, and practical applications. The primary goals of UTEX that fulfill this mission are (1) maintaining a well-curated permanent repository for algal biodiversity that insures the continuity and consistency of algal research; (2) providing living algal cultures and related materials to the user community at a modest cost; (3) acting as a source of information regarding algae to researchers, educators, and the interested public; and (4) participating in outreach to the user community through training, support services, and supplies. Additional goals of this project are to (1) enhance the security of UTEX holdings through improved culture maintenance techniques and expansion of the number of strains in cryogenic storage, (2) increase the value of UTEX algal strains to the user community by characterizing their genomic and metabolic diversity, (3) expand interactions with K-12 and undergraduate education programs through the development of teaching kits and online teaching tools, and (4) accession and make available a greater diversity of strains that are of value for emerging and expanding areas of pure and applied research.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.