Sources of microbial reference materials

Despite the importance of the microbiome in a wide array of human and environmental health settings, challenges remain in taking accurate and precise measurements of microbial communities. Challenges in measuring microbial communities can be partially addressed through the use of \"reference materials,\" which we interpret as any physical material that can be used for quality control, validation, diagnostics, and standardization in metagenomic, microbiome, or multi-omics workflows. As members of the International Microbiome and Multi'Omics Standards Alliance (IMMSA) Reference Materials Working Group, we collated a list of available sources of microbial reference material standards. Each entry in our list includes a description, type of material, availability, storage requirements, biosafety level, species richness, and more. Due to the geographical composition of the working group, the list of materials may be biased towards materials that are available in regions of North America and Wes...

尽管微生物组在诸多人类健康与环境卫生场景中均具有重要意义，但对微生物群落开展精准且精密的测量仍面临诸多挑战。微生物群落测量所面临的挑战，可部分通过采用「参考物质（reference materials）」加以应对——本工作组将其定义为可用于宏基因组学（metagenomics）、微生物组学（microbiome）或多组学（multi-omics）工作流程中的质量控制、验证、诊断与标准化的各类实物材料。作为国际微生物组与多组学标准联盟（International Microbiome and Multi'Omics Standards Alliance, IMMSA）参考物质工作组的成员，我们整理了一份现有微生物参考物质标准的来源清单。该清单的每一项条目均包含物质描述、材料类型、可获取性、储存要求、生物安全等级（biosafety level）、物种丰富度（species richness）等相关信息。鉴于工作组的地域构成情况，该清单收录的材料可能更偏向于北美及[原文未完整表述的区域]可获取的相关物质。