title: Make Histri: reconstructing the exchange history of bacterial and archaeal type strains.
abstract: Each transfer of a microbial strain between a Biological Resource Center (BRC) and an individual researcher or another BRC imposes a risk of contamination or human error. Such artifacts jeopardize the quality of scientific results. In order to trace back possible scientific discrepancies that can be linked to failure of authenticity of the biological material involved, we launched the 'Make Histri' project that aims at reconstructing the exchange history ('Histri') of all bacterial and archaeal type strains as can be deduced from the information contained in BRC online catalogs. A Histri, visualized as a rooted tree, contains all known strain numbers attributed to the various cultures of a given strain, annotated with additional information about each transfer of microbial material.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Microbiology, Ghent University, K.L. Ledeganckstraat 35, 9000 Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Bert
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Verslyppe
authors.forename: Wim
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: De Smet
authors.forename: Bernard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: De Baets
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: De Vos
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Dawyndt
mesh_terms: D001105:Archaea / Q000145:classification*; D001419:Bacteria / Q000145:classification*; D045247:Chryseobacterium; D016208:Databases, Factual; D012984:Software; D009626:Terminology as Topic; D014584:User-Computer Interface