United Kingdom Culture Collections

SUMMARY: Old catalogues are useless in trying to locate micro-organisms in culture collections. The addresses are given of the larger culture collections in the U.K., and an indication of the type of micro-organisms each maintains. Specialized collections exist in different parts of the country, but in the past few have undertaken to distribute cultures except as a personal favour to colleagues working on similar problems. The chief difficulty of those seeking cultures is to know where to write, and what cultures are available. There have been so many changes in the organisms kept in the different collections that pre-war catalogues give no indication of the present whereabouts of the various species, It may be helpful to indicate where different types of micro-organism are now kept. Algae and Protozoa. Algae, flagellata and ciliosa are kept in Dr E. G. Pringsheim’s collection at Cambridge (Collection 1 in Table 1). When application is made for a culture the intended use should be indicated so that the culture may be brought into the appropriate state. Other laboratories keep Protozoa of interest to medical and veterinary workers, and the addresses can be found in a mimeographed catalogue prepared by the Laboratory Animals Bureau, which can be obtained from the Roya