Microbial Preservation: Freeze Drying & Cryopreservation.

Many laboratories maintain their own collection of stock cultures for production, research or QC uses, but repeated subculturing can leave these cultures vulnerable to contamination and genetic drift. It is good practice to preserve strains that you work with for long term storage. This can help to reduce the number of passages and the subsequent risk of strain drift.

We can freeze dry or cryopreserve your cultures and return them to you ready for long term storage.

NCIMB Ltd is home to the UK's National Collection of Industrial, Food and Marine Bacteria. The collection includes thousands of strains isolated from a diverse range of environments and substances. As curators of a national culture collection, we have decades of experience of preserving microbial cultures by lyophilisation and cryopreservation. Our experienced scientific staff can advise on the suitability of different species for freeze drying, and NCIMB has an extensive library of media recipes for resuscitation.

Do you really know the strains you are working with? Use our whole genome microbial sequencing services to get to know the strains you work with inside out. Sequences can be used to periodically check for genetic drift in working stocks. We can also screen sequences for properties such as antimicrobial resistance or virulence factors.

We also offer a storage service to provide an offsite back-up to protect again equipment failure or other disasters.

Our freeze drying and cryopreservation service is for small batches, to help laboratories store and maintain their own stocks.

We can accept ACDP category 1 and 2 strains for freeze drying. NCIMB does not accept active cultures of dangerous human pathogens or organisms isolated from clinical or diseased plant materials for identification. We cannot accept strains known to be above ACDP category 2 and ACGM class 1.