ABSTRACT
The network's mission is to: facilitate the safe and responsible utilization of microbial resources for research, education, industry, medicine, and agriculture for the betterment of humankind by providing opportunities for US culture collection workers to engage with each other and with the broader culture collection community. As methods for identifying microorganisms have come to rely more and more on methods such as DNA sequencing and metagenomics, instead of the traditional enzyme activity tests; the need for absolute consistency in standard strains has become of paramount importance. The chapter discusses the major changes that has taken place in the area of culture collections has been the efforts to standardize how repositories function.
