by Dr Samantha Law, Curator, NCIMB
One of the reasons that I love being the curator of a microbial culture collection is the potential that exists within it. Microbial strains are at the heart of innovations with so many societal benefits – from foodstuffs to fuels, medicines and sustainable chemical production, we are really only just beginning to understand how microorganisms can benefit mankind.
For companies and research groups working with microorganisms, years of research and development may have gone into strain selection and process optimisation, making microorganisms highly valuable, perhaps even irreplicable assets. So its always heart-breaking to hear about unnecessary losses and set backs that could be so easily avoided with an offsite backup of important strains.
An offsite backup should be one of the first considerations when it comes to managing strains that are key to research projects or production processes, and a back up should be a central part of disaster recovery plans. However, while backing up data and IT systems is commonplace, and laboratories, freezers and fridges in which microbial strains are stored are insured, backing up biological assets themselves is often overlooked.
However, biological materials are susceptible to loss as a result of fire, natural disasters, power failure and human error and several high profile examples of this have been reported over the years. In 2024, it was reported that research samples collected over decades at a Swedish medical university, and estimated to be worth millions of pounds, were destroyed when a freezer malfunctioned during the Christmas holidays. The year before, it was reported that a cleaner at a college in New York state accidentally destroyed decades of research by turning off a freezer in order to mute an alarm and several years prior to that, after a blaze at a prestigious UK university reports described personnel entering the dark, flooded building to retrieve freezers in order to save the biological material stored within them.
But its not just these dramatic high profile events that can cause problems for researchers and companies working with microbial strains. Contamination of cultures and genetic drift can easily occur, especially when strains are being used for long-term programmes of work – it is all too easy to lose track of how many times your strain has been cultured since it was originally isolated.
If you are working with strains that you have purchased from a culture collection like NCIMB, in these situations, you can always buy another ampoule. If, however, you are working with strains that you have isolated yourself, modified, or obtained in some other way that means they would be difficult to replace, loss of a strain could set your research programme back months or even years, so it makes sense to take greater care and minimize that risk.
A few easy additional steps can ensure that the integrity of your strain is maintained, and that you always have pure cultures at your fingertips. So, what are the steps you should be taking? When you receive or isolate a strain, one of the first things that you should do is preserve multiple copies of it for long term storage. This is not possible for all kinds of biological material, but luckily, for many microorganisms it is easy to do.
Long term storage has many benefits – it maintains the integrity of the original sample and it ensures that the strain will remain viable for a significant period of time. Contamination is an ever-present hazard for microbiologists and long-term storage gives you a bank of reliable spares should this happen to you, or your working stocks are no longer viable.
Once you have prepared your multiple copies for long term storage, it is a good idea to store them in more than one location to protect against things like fire and local power failures. At NCIMB, as a national reference collection, it is essential that we follow best practice to ensure that the strains placed in our care are available for future generations of scientists to access and work with and consequently we have an off-site back-up of our culture collection.
If you are working with a smaller number of strains it might be possible to make a reciprocal arrangement for storage with another laboratory. However, if you have any specific requirements, such as cGMP compliant storage, a professional storage service is likely to be a more appropriate solution.
NCIMB provides a storage service for researchers in both industry and academia, that allows them to store a back-up of their important biological material off site. It’s a simple and low-cost process that not only protects your strains but can also speed up the process of depositing in the culture collection for publication purposes or making a patent deposit when you are ready to do so.
We offer our biological material storage customers a choice of Safe Deposit, cGMP compliant Safe Deposit or Bespoke Secure Storage. The options available for each service are summarised in the table below.
| Options available | Standard safe deposit | cGMP compliant safe deposit | Bespoke secure storage |
| Confidential storage service | X | X | X |
| Unique NCIMB number can be assigned: This can be used as a strain reference in product literature without revealing the strain identity. | X | X | X |
| Can be converted to a patent deposit at a later date | X | X | X |
| Cryogenic freezer storage: <-120oC | X | X | X |
| Ultra low freezer storage: -80oC | X | X | X |
| Freezer storage: -20°C | X | ||
| Refrigerated storage of lyophilised strains: 2°C – 8°C | X | X | |
| Held in a secure area with limited access | X | X | |
| Dedicated cryobox or column within freezer | X | ||
| Dedicated, customised storage area | X | ||
| Continuous temperature measurements | X | X | X |
| 24/7 response to deviations | X | X | |
| Validated freezers | X | X |
Our cGMP storage packages follow auditable procedures using validated equipment. They can be tailored to your requirements and include a choice of features including dedicated, high security and customised storage vessels or areas.
We are regularly audited by our blue chip clients from the UK and overseas, ensuring we meet their high standards.
If you would like to benefit from our safe deposit service, we accept ampoules or cryovials ready for immediate storage. Alternatively, you can send cultures as slopes, plates or broths and we can preserve them for you prior to storage.
You can find out more about or full range of storage services on our preservation, storage and patent deposit pages. Get in touch using the form on this page or email enquiries@ncimb.com if you would like to discuss your storage requirements with us .
“An offsite backup should be one of the first considerations when it comes to managing strains that are key to research projects or production processes.”