About the Institution

The Leibniz Institute DSMZ - German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures, Braunschweig with Database and IT-Department is one of the largest biological resource centers worldwide. Its culture and tissue collections and DNA Bank currently comprise almost 40,000 items, including about 20,000 different bacterial and 5,000 fungal strains, 700 human and animal cell lines, 800 plant cell lines, 1,000 plant viruses and antisera, and 4,800 different types of bacterial genomic DNA.


About the Data Center

The DSMZ data center focusses on providing organism-linked information covering the multifarious aspects of bacterial biodiversity.

Data archiving for research projects:

  • Data accompanied by the deposit of a biological resource (bacterial or cell culture lines) within the DSMZ collections (Deposit in the DSMZ)
  • Data describing microbial diversity (e.g. taxonomic classification, morphology, physiology, cultivation, origin, natural habitat)

Data Center Profile

Name

DSMZ – Leibniz Institute DSMZ – German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures, Braunschweig 

URL

https://www.dsmz.de/
Description

Besides being a comprehensive bioresource center, DSMZ is as well a state-of-the-art research institute. More than 40 scientists, PhDs and postdoctoral fellows make us an active research collection. Research areas include the microbial ecology, diversity and phylogenesis, the mechanisms of microbial evolution. Furthermore, our research fields comprise bioinfomatics, microbial cell biology, single cell genomics and infection research. Located at the DSMZ is BacDive - The Bacterial Diversity Metadatabase. BacDive focuses providing organism-linked information covering the multifarious aspects of bacterial biodiversity, e.g. taxonomic classification, morphology, physiology, cultivation, origin, natural habitat. BacDive offers the opportunity to publish datasets in an highly integrated database. The integration of additional data is a central objective of BacDive. Proposals for the integration of relevant collection descriptions are highly encouraged. In the medium term, data submissions and data flow via GFBio Data portal will be fully automated by integrated interfaces. We encourage to combine data submission to the DSMZ GFBio Data Center with the deposit of the biological resource: Available (Meta-)Data for strains deposited at the DSMZ open collection. The data is then curated in the DSMZ in house data management solution and published via BacDive interfaces to GFBio portal and associated data portals.

Scientific data curation services (incl. taxonomic services)

The Leibniz Institute DSMZ is an active research collection and covers various fields of research, e.g. microbial ecology and diversity research; for more information see research at DSMZ. The DSMZ has a long established and well-founded expertise in microbial research collection management, taxonomy. As a high quality taxonomic list DSMZ offers List of Prokaryotic names with Standing in Nomenclature (LPSN). LPSN provides comprehensive information on the nomenclature of prokaryotes and much more. As infrastructure facility the DSMZ maintains specific expertise and offers counseling in the areas.

Besides its function as an infrastructure facility, DSMZ maintains comprehensive expert knowledge in data driven aspects of microbiology, genomics, bioinformatics and biodiversity-orientated research. The Leibniz- Institute DSMZ is an active member of global bioresource center networks such as the World Federation for Culture Collections (WFCC) and publishes information on its biological resources for years via the Global Biodiversity Information Facility ( GBIF), the DNA Bank Network, Global Genome Biodiversity Network (GGBN), via the Common Access to Biological Resources and Information (CABRI) portal or via contributions to the strain-associated catalogue of the StrainInfo bioportal. Within the GBIF Germany the DSMZ constitutes the GBIF-D node Bacteria & Archaea. The DSMZ hosts the coordination Office of Microbial Resource Research Infrastructure (MIRRI) and actively participates in several of its workpackages.

Data domains (scope)

As DSMZ data center we focus on providing organism-linked information covering the multifarious aspects of bacterial biodiversity.

Target group

Service Description

Data archiving for research projects is focusing on

Type 1

Data accompanied by the deposit of a biological resource within the DSMZ collections ( Deposit in the DSMZ)

Type 2Data describing microbial diversity (e.g. taxonomic classification, morphology, physiology, cultivation, origin, natural habitat), according to our profile description (DSMZ - extended profile, DSMZ)


IT services

Data submission and accession

  • BacDive - The Bacterial Diversity Metadatabase - custom data import of descriptions of culture collections, expert-compiled compendia, trait data. Additionally, we have implemented functionalities for individual data annotation in BacDive. This extension is currently in alpha release state and tested only in house.
  • DSMZ open collection - Combined deposition of biological resources and descriptive data

Data integration and management

  • Expertise and counseling in collection management of microorganisms, plant cell lines and viruses, human and animal cell lines

Data backup and archiving

  • Backup and archiving facilities of the Leibniz Institute DSMZ

Data publication

User services

  • Individual support, workshops and trainings on request and available capacities
  • BacDive User Helpdesk
Service LevelsData Set  xData Package x Data management xResearch Objects x
Data Formats

Data Submission Formats

Data

Via DSMZ online accession form or  spreadsheets (CSV), preferably standardized formats of any kind, MySQL Dumps Example templates for data submission can be found in the GFBio collection of recommended data submission templates

MetadataEML, ABCD, DarwinCore, MCL

Data Accessibility

Public access pointsGFBio, BioCASe Data Access Services at the DSMZ, GBIF, BacDive
Standardised exchange formatsXML-files in ABCD, DarwinCore, EML standard. Web services of the DSMZ accession platform and BacDive platform
Data formatsText, CSV, XML
Long-term availabilityUnlimited

Data Publication Services

Data CitationA citation is provided for all published data
DOI

A DOI is provided via GBIF

Archiving (RAW-data ingest, data, media)


Licenses / Terms of Use

Metadata



Data


Documentation

Computing center, external service provider

name of the associated computing center(s), (commercial) service provider(s) and services provided


Backup


Your contact persons at DSMZ

Data curator

  • Christian Ebeling

Technical contact

  • Christian Ebeling

NFDI contact persons

  • Lorenz Reimer, Christian Ebeling



Do you have questions, feedback or need help?

Contact our Helpdesk for direct support.