Biological Resource Centres (BRCs): European and Global Projects

BRCs are considered to be one of the key elements for sustainable international scientific infrastructure, which is necessary to underpin successful delivery of the benefits of biotechnology, whether within the health sector, the industrial sector or other sectors, and in turn ensure that these advances help drive economical growth. In more detail, BRCs are defined by OECD as service providers and repositories of the living cells, genomes of organisms, and information relating to heredity and functions of biological systems. BRCs contain collections of culturable organisms (e.g. microorganisms, plant, animal cells), replicable parts of these (e.g. genomes, plasmids, virus, cDNAs), viable but not yet culturable organisms, cells and tissues, as well as database containing molecular, physiological and structural information relevant to these collections and related bioinformatics (OECD, 2001). Thus BRCs are fundamental to harnessing and preserving the world’s biodiversity and genetic resources and serve as an essential element of the infrastructure for research and development. BRCs serve a multitude of functions and assume a range of shapes and forms. Some are large national centres performing a comprehensive role providing access to diverse organisms. Other centres play much narrower, yet important, roles, supplying limited but crucial specialised resources