Sustaining the Chlamydomonas Resource Center

该奖项授予明尼苏达大学双城分校，以支持衣藻资源中心（CRC）的运作，该中心负责维护和分配支持单细胞绿藻莱茵衣藻研究的资源。衣藻是一种独特的真核生物模型系统，用于研究光合作用、鞭毛运动和许多其他基本过程，是越来越多地应用于生物能源和生物燃料研究的藻类系统。衣藻也被证明是一种强大的教学工具，该中心通过提供一个简单的课堂实验库，以及用于中学和高等学校实验的含有细胞和用品的廉价工具包来鼓励衣藻。40多年来，在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，CRC为研究人员提供了使用这一强大模型系统进行研究和教学所需的专业知识和资源。Chlamydomonas Resource Center （CRC）是真核绿藻Chlamydomonas在生物学研究中所需要的材料和信息的唯一综合来源。这项为期三年的奖励将使CRC能够：1)维护和分发构成该收集核心的突变衣藻、细菌克隆和试剂的收集；2)获取、编目、维护和分发衣藻群落提供的新的突变株和野生型菌株及细菌质粒；3)为教育工作者和学生提供教学包和实验方案。由于衣藻保留了动物和植物细胞的主要祖先特征，包括与高等植物非常相似的光合装置，以及后生动物的纤毛运动特征，衣藻研究的智力影响非常广泛。该中心维护并供应7万多株突变型和野生型衣藻，以及cDNA和基因组DNA文库、基因图谱试剂盒、细胞生长试剂以及中学和大专课堂教学用试剂盒和实验室方案。CRC在两个琼脂平板或斜面上保存所有突变体和野生型衣藻菌株，并在液氮中保存两份突变体标本。大多数订单都在两天内完成。该中心还拥有一个综合性网站（chlamycollection.org），该网站提供了一个从该中心馆藏中订购物品的店面，但也提供了衣藻研究常用技术的最新信息，基因组的遗传和分子图谱，教学工具和衣藻研究界感兴趣的新闻。CRC工作人员通过鼓励用户在发表时将其突变体添加到收集中，并接受来自个别研究人员的菌株和菌株收集，确保衣藻研究人员产生的突变体的可用性。全世界的衣藻研究界依靠这一独特的资源来继续和扩大对这一有价值的模型系统的研究。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award to the University of Minnesota Twin Cities supports the operation of the Chlamydomonas Resource Center (CRC), which maintains and distributes resources supporting research on the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Chlamydomonas is a unique eukaryotic model system for studying photosynthesis, flagellar motility, and many other basic processes, and is an increasingly employed algal system for applied research bioenergy and biofuels. Chlamydomonas has also proven to be a powerful teaching tool, which the Center encourages by providing a library of simple classroom experiments, and inexpensive kits with cells and supplies for experiments in secondary and post-secondary schools. For more than 40 years, with NSF support, the CRC has provided the expertise and resources needed by researchers to use this powerful model system for research and teaching. The Chlamydomonas Resource Center (CRC) is the only comprehensive source for materials and information needed to use the eukaryotic green alga Chlamydomonas in biological research. Support from this three year award will allow the CRC to: 1) maintain and distribute the collection of Chlamydomonas mutants, bacterial clones, and reagents that form the core of the collection; 2) acquire, catalogue, maintain and distribute new mutant and wild-type strains and bacterial plasmids provided by the Chlamydomonas community; and 3) to provide teaching kits and experimental protocols to educators and students.Because Chlamydomonas retains key ancestral features of animal and plant cells, including a photosynthetic apparatus much like that of higher plants, as well as ciliary motility characteristic of metazoans, the intellectual impact of Chlamydomonas research is remarkably broad. The CRC maintains and supplies more than 70,000 mutant and wild-type strains of Chlamydomonas, along with cDNA and genomic DNA libraries, kits for genetic mapping, reagents for cell growth and kits and lab protocols for teaching in secondary and post-secondary classrooms. The CRC maintains all mutant and wild-type Chlamydomonas strains on both agar plates or slants and maintains two copies of the mutant collection frozen in liquid nitrogen. Most orders are filled within two days. The CRC also maintains a comprehensive website (chlamycollection.org) that provides a storefront to order items from the CRC collections, but also provides up-to-date information on commonly used techniques for Chlamydomonas research, genetic and molecular maps of the genome, tools for teaching and news of interest to the Chlamydomonas research community. The CRC staff ensures the availability of mutants generated by Chlamydomonas researchers by encouraging users to add their mutants to the collection upon publication, and by accepting strains and strain collections from individual researchers. The Chlamydomonas research community world-wide depends on this unique resource to continue and expand research on this valuable model system.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.