From StrainRegistry to StrainInfo: tracking microbial strains through a FAIR deposition system

Poster presented at ECCO XLIII

In scientific literature and databases, different strain identifiers can be used to describe the same microbial
strain, which significantly impedes the findability, reusability and integration of published information,
and thus also the reproducibility of research results. In order to ensure the traceability of microbial strains,
the StrainInfo database collects and matches all their known strain identifiers. To additionally improve
and encourage the referencing and linking of microbial strain data, StrainInfo has introduced the DOI as
a persistent identifier for strains.

When researchers isolate and describe large sets of strains from microbiome studies they need persistent
identifiers early on to keep track of them throughout the deposition process in culture collections as well
as in publications and sequence submissions. The DSMZ has developed a bulk submission procedure for
strain collections that greatly simplifies the deposition of large sets of strains and provides StrainInfo DOIs
early in the process. This allows the tracking of the deposition statuses of strains and improves the
traceability by their DOI throughout literature and databases.

A new deposition management system, called StrainRegistry, will further ease the process in the future.
It will allow microbiologists to register strains, that they wish to deposit in a culture collection, with meta-
and deposition data. This ensures that FAIR strain data is available from the outset. While the data will
initially be kept private, it will be possible to directly submit it to one or more participating culture
collections for deposition. Later, it can easily be integrated into StrainInfo and other databases.
StrainRegistry will visualize the deposition status of each strain and facilitate communication between the
depositors and the responsible culture collection curators and thus assist researchers in managing the
deposition of strains.