In microbiology, the communication and comparison of research findings and data is often complicated by the existence of a number of different designation and identifiers for the same strain. StrainInfo is a service developed to provide a resolution of microbial strain identifiers by storing culture collection numbers, their relations, and culture-associated data.
StrainInfo provides users with information about strain identities. These consist of combined strain identifiers from multiple resources. Furthermore the strains are linked with other comprehensive curated datasets about this strain. For this purpose, StrainInfo assigns a unique StrainInfo ID (SI-ID) and a DOI to each strain and keeps an archive for different versions of the strain data. A user with limited information about a strain can use the StrainInfo Strain Search to find out more about it. The Strain Search takes a wide variety of search terms, like the StrainInfo SI-ID, culture collection numbers, other strain designations, taxon names and sequence accession numbers. The search results lead the use to a StrainInfo strain page that lists culture collection numbers and other designations of the strain, information from and links to culture collection catalogues as well as links to other data resources, sequence data and publications. As a new feature StrainInfo now offers a "Strain Registration Service". Researchers can contact us to register their own strains with "Type Cultures". The strain will be assigned a SI-ID and a DOI. Data that we receive or gather about this strain in the future will automatically be linked to it. This registration is possible, even if the strain was not deposited at a culture collection before. The SI-ID and DOI give the researcher unique and persistent identifiers for their strain that can be used for publications, deposition or identification in general.
StrainInfo was initially created by BCCM/LMG between the years 2005 and 2015 and is currently being developed by DSMZ.
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