The Arabidopsis.info germplasm service (NASC: V)

The Nottingham Arabidopsis Stock Centre (NASC) is a National and International Capability Resource that has been running successfully for over 20 years. From small beginnings with only 200 seed stocks in 1991, NASC now has over 800,000 stocks and sends out materials to researchers worldwide (over 120,000 tubes in 2010 alone).

Our users are a broad spectrum of scientists and educators who use these germplasm resources as key materials in their research. These range from insights into global food security to the development of biofuels; and from basic fundamental questions about plant growth and development to models for breeding and education. Arabidopsis has led (and in some cases driven) the development of new fields such as systems biology and sequencing based eco-genomics in plants.

NASC is a reference library and acts (with its sister centre in Ohio) as the word's largest, most accessible collection of academic seed germplasm for any single species. Stocks arrive at NASC as tens of thousands of donations every year from all over the academic world. These are preserved in specialist seed storage facilities dedicated to the long-term storage and conservation of seeds. Our dedicated technicians receive these donations, store and regenerate low volume donations; and then process orders placed through our on-line user-friendly catalogue.

For the last ten years we have charged all users a nominal fee per stock in order to demonstrate a willingness to supplement our grant with cost recovery income. This has been used to employ temporary workers within NASC to (more than) match staff numbers on the grant. It also means that our UK funding is partly matched by substantial direct charging of foreign users.

This application asks for funds for primarily technical staff salaries largely in order to maintain the status quo of a very successful genetic resource unit.

This application asks for funds for primarily technical staff salaries largely in order to maintain the status quo of a very successful genetic resource unit.

NASC is a resource that emerged consensually out of the community 20 years ago. Current holdings stand at over 800,000 seed and clone stocks donated with their associated datasets from a vigorous worldwide Arabidopsis community to two separate security storage and redistribution centres (us and ABRC in Ohio).

This centralisation of biological resources has maximised access to these resources for researchers worldwide. In 2010 alone, NASC distributed over 120,000 stocks per annum globally (with a similar number being distributed from our US sister centre). This has been done on a successful partial cost-recovery basis for over 10 years where the price per stock ensures accessibility to even the smallest laboratories. Each stock centre regenerates approximately 15,000 depleted stocks per year from cost recovery income using temporary staff.

Our primary remit is to locate, capture and produce public germplasm and data describing Arabidopsis (and related species) and to integrate them into a form that makes our seed services as accessible and useful to the Arabidopsis and greater plant community as possible.

All of the NASC services are constantly developed and centred on principles of sample standardisation, best-practice data collection and curation, open data output, and transparent external dissemination. Our catalogue is easy to use and comprehensive and our web-presence is mature and pro-active.

In the coming 5-year period we will maintain our current collection and continue to expand and serve the plant community in the open and customer oriented approach that we have successfully maintained for two decades. We anticipate a continued distribution rate at over 100,000 stocks per annum and we expect to receive over 100,000 additional high-value stocks into the centre.

The increasing demands of a growing, prosperous world for improved agricultural products including food, fibre and fuel, intensifies the need for an extensive understanding of the basic biology and ecology of plants. Arabidopsis is the most widely used model system to study plant biology and has delivered numerous breakthroughs in understanding of plant and basic biological processes.

Knowledge gained from studies in Arabidopsis serves to advance our understanding of other plant species, particularly crop species, and thus translates into new or improved plant products and increased agricultural productivity. Arabidopsis has underpinned the genomic revolution in plant science and represents the template on which other plant and crop genomes are annotated and assessed. Arabidopsis data is key to modern crop science and through that to food security and quality of life.

Filing of patents is one measure of potential commercial activity and in 2010 there were 1,137 US utility patents referencing Arabidopsis compared to only 23 in 1994. A similarly dramatic 35-fold increase in European patent applications referencing Arabidopsis has occurred in the same timeframe.

According to The Arabidopsis Information Resource (TAIR); as of May 10th 2011 there were 21,771 Arabidopsis researchers in 8,465 laboratories worldwide. The Nottingham Arabidopsis Stock Centre (NASC) and our sister centre ABRC in the US, together have a vital core role as infrastructure support for this highly distributed and prolific Arabidopsis community.

Our services are equally available to Universities, institutes, companies and international users through simple, intuitive interfaces. Distribution abroad requires the same infrastructure as a purely UK resource but adds value by encouraging international donation of stocks, supplementing grant income and helping to consolidate the Arabidopsis and wider plant Community. All European plant research groups requiring Arabidopsis stocks are obliged to use NASC (All American users are obliged to use ABRC); but thousands of non-Europeans access our resource, particularly from Asia (notably China).

We provide materials, data and guidance worldwide (currently over 100,000 seed tubes per year); and our existence helps tens of thousands of users to save time, money and effort through centralised services. Our outreach is extensive, regular and user- oriented and we constantly strive to improve both our customer service and our value to the community.

We have also been useful to BBSRC policy makers and marketing units through our inclusion in BBSRC publications: the BBSRC Data Sharing Policy documentation held NASC up as one of four examples of good practice; the 2009 BBSRC Bioscience Resources for Food Security pamphlet specifically flagged us as a key collection seed resource and our transcriptome analysis service as supporting the UK Food Security priority. These documents are utilised both by science policy makers and strategic users.