Standard Laboratory Strains
From DictyWiki
Background and Goal
Dear Colleagues,
The stock center has of course followed the recent discussion about strains with great interest. A lot of good arguments were made.
We want you to know that we are able to help out with whatever you decide. One of the functions of the stock center always has been to provide standardized strains.
We have already had a couple of requests from new laboratories about what strain we would recommend as the lab strain. We are not prepared to give an unequivocal answer, but we would recommend that it be a strain with less (least) amount of duplication. This also is suggested in a paper, soon to be published, by Bloomfield et al (PMID: 18430225). This paper is a study with data concerning duplications and deletions in various laboratory stocks.
Another consideration should be the problems to be studied and with what strains one wants to compare results. For example, a large number of cytokinesis-related studies have been performed with the standardized strain AX2-214 and it might make sense to use this strain for related problems. However, a lot chemotaxis studies have been done with DH1 or AX3 from the Devreotes lab.
One final consideration should be the fact that it is the strain AX4 that has been sequenced.
But standardized strains only work if the labs that use them follow proper culture and maintenance procedures. The most important aspect of this is to store a (large) number of aliquots of axenically grown cells, either at -80C or in liquid nitrogen, as soon as you receive the strain. Every month an aliquot should be thawed to start a new culture.
Another option is to store a few vials of spores at -80C or even at -20C. Every month one can scrape a few spores onto a bacterial plate, and axenic cultures can be started by transfering growing cells from the bacterial plate into HL5 with streptomycin. Protocols are on the dictyBase website.
If you are in the habit of sub-culturing the same stock for months on end, you are definitely not working with the same strain anymore with which you started.
Best regards, Jakob Franke and dictyBase
To collaborate
If you are interested in collaborating on this (ie, use one of the standard strains and make new strains using that stock), please enter your name and the strains you want to work with; or email Pascale (pgaudet@northwestern.edu) or dictyBase (dicty@northwestern.edu) for your name to be added here.
- Pierre Cosson: AX2
- Thierry Soldati : AX2
