Collections of micro-organisms are a crucial element of life science research infrastructure but are vulnerable to loss and damage caused by natural or man-made disasters, the untimely death or retirement of personnel, or the loss of research funding. Preservation of biological collections has risen in priority due to a new appreciation for discoveries linked to preserved specimens, emerging hurdles to international collecting and decreased funding for new collecting. While many historic collections have been lost, several have been preserved, some with dramatic rescue stories. Rescued microbes have been used for discoveries in areas of health, biotechnology and basic life science. Suggestions for long-term planning for microbial stocks are listed, as well as inducements for long-term preservation.
The challenges faced by living stock collections in the USA
Many discoveries in the life sciences have been made using material from living stock collections. These collections provide a uniform and stable supply of living organisms and related materials that enhance the reproducibility of research and minimize the need for repetitive calibration. While collections differ in many ways, they all require expertise in maintaining living organisms and good logistical systems for keeping track of stocks and fulfilling requests for specimens. Here, we review some of the contributions made by living stock collections to research across all branches of the tree of life, and outline the challenges they face.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1642534
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10049183
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- eLife
- Volume:
- 6
- ISSN:
- 2050-084X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Summary -
Changing salinity in estuaries due to sea level rise and altered rainfall patterns, as a result of climate change, has the potential to influence the interactions of aquatic pollutants as well as to alter their toxicity. From a chemical property point of view, ionic concentration can increase the octanol–water partition coefficient and thus decrease the water solubility of a compound. Biologically, organism physiology and enzyme metabolism are also altered at different salinities with implications for drug metabolism and toxic effects. This highlights the need to understand the influence of salinity on pesticide toxicity when assessing risk to estuarine and marine fishes, particularly considering that climate change is predicted to alter salinity regimes globally and many risk assessments and regulatory decisions are made using freshwater studies. Therefore, we exposed the Inland Silverside (Menidia beryllina) at an early life stage to seven commonly used pesticides at two salinities relevant to estuarine waters (5 PSU and 15 PSU). Triadimefon was the only compound to show a statistically significant increase in toxicity at the 15 PSU LC50. However, all compounds showed a decrease in LC50 values at the higher salinity, and all but one showed a decrease in the LC10 value. Many organisms rely on estuaries as nurseries and increased toxicity at higher salinities may mean that organisms in critical life stages of development are at risk of experiencing adverse, toxic effects. The differences in toxicity demonstrated here have important implications for organisms living within estuarine and marine ecosystems in the Anthropocene as climate change alters estuarine salinity regimes globally.more » « less
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Our goal in this paper is to examine whether there are similar patterns in the distribution of tree canopy by Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) graded neighborhoods across 37 cities. A pre-print of the paper can be found here: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/97zcs This data packages contains: 1. City-specific file geodatabases with features classes of the HOLC polygons obtained from the Mapping Inequality Project https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/, and tables summarizing tree canopy, and in some cases other land cover classes. 2. An *.R script that replicates all of the analyses, graphs, and tables in the paper. Other double checks, exploratory, and miscellaneous outputs are created by the script too as a bonus. Everything in the paper can be done with the script; additional work outputs are also created. 3. A *.csv file containing city, the HOLC grade, and the percent tree canopy cover. This can be used to create the main findings of the paper and this flat file is provided as an alternative to running the R script to extract information from the geodatabases, combine, and analyze them. The intention is that this file is more widely accessible; the underlying information is the same. Redlining was a racially discriminatory housing policy established by the federal government’s Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) during the 1930s. For decades, redlining limited access to homeownership and wealth creation among racial minorities, contributing to a host of adverse social outcomes, including high unemployment, poverty, and residential vacancy, that persist today. While the multigenerational socioeconomic impacts of redlining are increasingly understood, the impacts on urban environments and ecosystems remains unclear. To begin to address this gap, we investigated how the HOLC policy administered 80 years ago may relate to present-day tree canopy at the neighborhood level. Urban trees provide many ecosystem services, mitigate the urban heat island effect, and may improve quality of life in cities. In our prior research in Baltimore, MD, we discovered that redlining policy influenced the location and allocation of trees and parks. Our analysis of 37 metropolitan areas here shows that areas formerly graded D, which were mostly inhabited by racial and ethnic minorities, have on average ~23% tree canopy cover today. Areas formerly graded A, characterized by U.S.-born white populations living in newer housing stock, had nearly twice as much tree canopy (~43%). Results are consistent across small and large metropolitan regions. The ranking system used by Home Owners’ Loan Corporation to assess loan risk in the 1930s parallels the rank order of average percent tree canopy cover today.more » « less
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Abstract Zoos and natural history museums are both collections-based institutions with important missions in biodiversity research and education. Animals in zoos are a repository and living record of the world's biodiversity, whereas natural history museums are a permanent historical record of snapshots of biodiversity in time. Surprisingly, despite significant overlap in institutional missions, formal partnerships between these institution types are infrequent. Life history information, pedigrees, and medical records maintained at zoos should be seen as complementary to historical records of morphology, genetics, and distribution kept at museums. Through examining both institution types, we synthesize the benefits and challenges of cross-institutional exchanges and propose actions to increase the dialog between zoos and museums. With a growing recognition of the importance of collections to the advancement of scientific research and discovery, a transformational impact could be made with long-term investments in connecting the institutions that are caretakers of living and preserved animals.more » « less
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Recent efforts to develop biocompatible and environmentally-friendly nanomaterials have yielded many biosynthetic methods for producing metallic nanoparticles which employ organisms from almost every branch of life. However, little progress has yet been made regarding the underlying mechanisms of most of these biosynthetic methods. In an attempt to address this gap in a knowledge, we have investigated the nanoparticle-producing ability of the ubiquitous biomolecule nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH), and have found that this coenzyme alone is sufficient to reduce Au3+ ion to gold nanoparticles (GNPs) in vitro. Synthesis using this method occurs nearly instantaneously at room temperature and produces uniformly spherical plasmonic nanoparticles with small sizes (<10 nm diameter). Both the speed of synthesis and the monodispersity of the produced GNPs are advantages over many other biosynthetic methods. As NADH is a universal component of all living things, our finding also suggests that this coenzyme may contribute to - or be wholly responsible for - some of the many previously- reported syntheses of GNPs by biological systems.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.24611
