NCTC bacteriophage collection and repository

The National Collection of Type Cultures (NCTC) is the world’s oldest bacterial collection that was specifically established to provide strains globally to support scientific research. In addition to the general catalogue NCTC has a fully curated bacteriophage archive that has not recently been available to the wider scientific community. The NCTC bacteriophage collection consists of over 100 bacteriophage and their corresponding bacterial hosts which were originally deposited for their value in bacterial typing. The collection consists of bacteriophage from the following hosts: Streptococcus agalactiae, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli and Campylobacter.

This NCTC bacteriophage collection is currently being characterised using a range of methods including electron microscopy and will be further chacterised using genomic sequencing in the future. It is intended that once characterised and rebanked the collection will be made available worldwide in 2019 to support scientific research. The NCTC bacteriophage collection will be dynamic, representing a repository into which microbiologists can deposit phages to support accessibility and reproducibility in science. 

To register your interest, contact culturecollections.businessE@phe.gov.uk.

January 2019