Public Health England's National Collection of Type Cultures (NCTC) is one of the longest established collections of microorganisms in the world. Its cultures reflect the history of clinical bacterial infections from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day. Set up in 1920 to “provide a trustworthy source of authentic bacteria for use in scientific studies”, the remit for NCTC has remained essentially unchanged. There are currently around 6000 type and reference strains in the collection, representing over a thousand different bacterial species, with deposits coming from a variety of sources including individual collections, the research community, Public Health England reference laboratories, and from national collections from around the world.

NCTC will be marking its 100-year history throughout 2020. To start the celebrations for this historical anniversary, NCTC will be holding a one-day symposium on 2 March 2020, to highlight the history of the collection, its curators and depositors. The majority of the programme is dedicated to scientific presentations by high profile scientists, current NCTC depositors and users of the NCTC 3000 whole genome sequence dataset; in addition, the work of NCTC artist in residence, bio-artist Anna Dumitriu, will be highlighted.

The symposium, held in an easy to access London location, will provide a forum for scientists to gain a better understanding of the historical importance of NCTC as a biological resource centre and its current role in supporting and promoting global health.

To see full details about the programme, attendance fees and to book your place, please visit the symposium website. 

For more information on this, and all NCTC centenary events throughout 2020, sign-up to receive NCTC newsletters, news and events emails www.phe-culturecollections.org.uk/signup and follow NCTC on Twitter @NCTC_3000

 

Image above: The National Collection of Type Cultures (NCTC) Curators over the decades