Sustaining the Chlamydomonas Resource Center

授予明尼苏达双城大学的这一奖项支持衣藻资源中心(CRC)的运营，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。衣藻是研究光合作用、鞭毛运动和许多其他基本过程的独特的真核模型系统，也是越来越多地被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图书馆和廉价的工具包来鼓励这种教学工具，其中包括中学和大专学校实验的细胞和用品。40多年来，在NSF的支持下，CRC提供了研究人员使用这一强大的模型系统进行研究和教学所需的专业知识和资源。衣藻资源中心(CRC)是利用真核绿藻衣藻进行生物学研究所需材料和信息的唯一综合来源。这项为期三年的奖项的支持将使儿童基金会能够：1)维护和分发衣藻突变株、细菌克隆和形成该收藏核心的试剂的集合；2)获取、编目、维护和分发由衣藻群落提供的新的突变和野生型菌株和细菌质粒；以及3)为教育工作者和学生提供教材和实验方案。由于衣藻保留了动植物细胞的关键祖先特征，包括与高等植物非常相似的光合作用装置，以及后生动物的纤毛运动特征，因此衣藻的研究对智力的影响是非常广泛的。该中心维护和提供了70,000多株衣藻突变株和野生型菌株，以及cDNA和基因组DNA文库、遗传图谱试剂盒、细胞生长试剂盒以及用于中学和中学后课堂教学的试剂盒和实验室规程。CRC在琼脂平板或斜面上保存所有突变和野生型衣藻菌株，并将突变收集的两份副本冷冻在液氮中。大多数订单在两天内完成。儿童权利委员会还维护一个全面的网站(chlamyCollection tion.org)，提供一个从儿童权利委员会收藏中订购物品的店面，但也提供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。儿童权利中心的工作人员通过鼓励用户在发表后将其突变添加到收集中，并接受个别研究人员提供的菌株和菌株收集，来确保衣藻研究人员产生的突变的可用性。世界范围内的衣原体研究界依赖于这一独特的资源来继续和扩大对这一有价值的模式系统的研究。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.