StrainRegistry – A central registry for microbial strains

ePoster presented at IUMS 2024 Increasingly, large microbiome studies generate considerable numbers of isolates. Deposition of these isolates to culture collections not only is in the interest of open science but is also required to formally name any new taxa found among them. This presents a challenge to both researchers and biological resource centers. While the former wish to receive culture collection numbers as soon as possible to use as persistent identifiers in publications, the latter do not have the capacity to process these sizable collections simultaneously. Here we present StrainRegistry, a novel strain registration and deposition management service connected to the StrainInfo database (https://straininfo.dsmz.de/). It allows microbiologists to register strains they want to deposit with strain identity information for StrainInfo and further meta- and deposition data, which are not published, but can directly be shared with a participating culture collection. The StrainRegistry user interface visualizes the deposition status of each strain and facilitates communication between the depositor and the responsible culture collection curator, who can view strain information, demand further data, request shipping of biological material and change strain statuses. When strains are accepted for deposition at a collection, they receive a persistent StrainInfo identifier and its respective DOI and are published in the database, where they can later be linked with culture collection numbers, sequences and publications. This procedure is being developed in collaboration with the curators of the DSMZ to simplify bulk deposition at the DSMZ and with the ambition to engage other culture collections and standardize microbial strain deposition worldwide.