Microbial Domain Biological Resource Centre HAMBI (LS-RIA/ HUBCRI)

Microbial culture collection HAMBI is situated at Viikki Campus in the connection the Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry. It was established in 1964 and is the oldest university based microbial culture collection in Finland. HAMBI has around 3000 bacterial, 2000 fungal and 1000 cyanobacterial strains. Significant part of the strains was isolated in Finland, and these strains represent uniquely Finnish biodiversity and are not deposited to other microbial culture collections. The microbes were isolated during many decades for the needs of research work and different microbial strains from different environments are continuously isolated and deposited to HAMBI. The collections of properly identified, taxonomically classified and documented pure microbial cultures are the most fundamental infrastructure of all research and education in microbiology, related biotechnology (environmental, microbial, industrial and food biotechnology), and plant related microbiology (mycorrhizal fungi, rhizobial bacteria, plant pathogens, forest tree pathogens). The unique fungal and cyanobacterial sub-collections have been in key position in many EU funded and national research consortia, in the Microbial Resources Center of Excellence (2002-2007, director Academy Prof. K. Sivonen, vice director Prof. A. Hatakka) and cyanobacteria also in the CoE in Integrative Photosynthesis and Bioactive Compound Research at Systems Biology Level (2008-2013). The services of the microbial culture collections are maintenance of microbes, distribution and identification of microbes, and education. Microbes are stored using freeze drying and cryostorage but also continuous re-cultivation in the case standard methods cannot be used. Microbial culture collections are nationally and internationally well networked, and HAMBI is member in Finnish MICCO, European ECCO and global WFCC. HAMBI is from 2014 member of MIRRI as collaborating party. MIRRI (Microbial Resource Research Infrastructure) belongs to ESFRI road map to Life Science infrastructures.