StrainInfo introduces electronic passports for microorganisms

Area of Science:

• Microbiology and Bioinformatics

Background:

• Microbiology research relies on biological material from biological resource centers (BRCs), each assigning unique strain numbers.
• The same microbial isolate can have multiple, non-standardized strain numbers across different BRCs due to deposits and exchanges.
• Searching for information on a specific microbial strain necessitates using all its known equivalent strain numbers.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce StrainInfo, a platform providing unified strain passports for microbial strains.
• To offer a centralized, uniform overview of all known information for a given microbial strain, including equivalent strain numbers and exchange history.
• To facilitate easier access to BRC catalog entries, sequences, and related literature for microbial research.

Main Methods:

• Development of 'strain passports' that aggregate information from various BRCs for individual microbial strains.
• Implementation of associated 'strain browsers' for direct access to underlying BRC catalog data.
• Creation of similar passports for taxon, sequence, and literature data, with machine-readable formats for automated analysis.

Main Results:

• Strain passports provide a uniform overview of microbial strain information, including all equivalent strain numbers.
• Direct access to BRC catalog entries, exchange history, sequences, and literature is integrated within the StrainInfo platform.
• Information is available in both human-readable web pages and machine-readable formats for large-scale analysis.

Conclusions:

• StrainInfo offers a novel solution to the challenge of fragmented microbial strain information across BRCs.
• The platform standardizes access to critical data, supporting collaborative and large-scale microbiological research.
• StrainInfo serves as an open platform to integrate microbial information, paving the way for new research methodologies.