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

藻类是影响全球环境、生态和经济的重要初级生产者。德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校（UTEX）的藻类培养收藏是为数不多的大型生物多样性活藻类收藏之一。UTEX拥有3000多种不同的藻类菌株，是公众可以获得的最具遗传多样性的生物体组合之一。UTEX收集的许多藻类都是独一无二的，不可替代的。UTEX向美国和世界各地的科学家、教育工作者和学生分发了数千种活藻培养物。对藻类作为运输燃料、人类食品、动物饲料、药品和许多其他用途的巨大兴趣使UTEX的培养和服务成为研究人员必不可少的资源。每年，数百篇发表的研究文章，其中许多都承认NSF的支持，引用了UTEX菌株的使用。UTEX提供广泛的学生培训、管理藻类培养的实践讲习班、信息丰富的互动网站（https://utex.org/）、物种鉴定服务、化学成分分析，以及与从事藻类研究的学生的广泛通信。UTEX的工作人员在公立学校进行演讲，带领学生参观UTEX的设施，协助教师和学生进行高中科学项目，并在当地的开放日活动中向数百名学生介绍藻类的科学重要性。UTEX是一个公共资源，其使命是促进、支持并使藻类用于研究、教育和实际应用成为可能。UTEX完成这一使命的主要目标是：(1)维护一个精心策划的藻类生物多样性永久储存库，以确保藻类研究的连续性和一致性；(2)以适度的成本向用户群体提供活藻培养物和相关材料；(3)为研究人员、教育工作者和感兴趣的公众提供有关藻类的信息来源；(4)通过培训、支持服务和供应参与用户社区的外展。该项目的其他目标是：(1)通过改进培养维护技术和增加低温储存菌株的数量来提高UTEX保存的安全性；(2)通过表征UTEX藻类菌株的基因组和代谢多样性来增加其对用户群体的价值；(3)通过开发教学工具包和在线教学工具来扩大与K-12和本科教育项目的互动。(4)增加并提供更多的菌株多样性，这些菌株对新兴和扩大的纯和应用研究领域有价值。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。

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.