GCM

Definition
WFCC Global Catalogue of Microorganisms (GCM) is expected to be a robust, reliable and user-friendly system to help culture collections to manage, disseminate and share the information related to their holdings. It also provides a uniform interface for the scientific and industrial communities to access the comprehensive microbial resource information.

Motivation
The increasing demands on culture collections for authenticated, reliable biological material and associated information have paralleled the growth of biotechnology. In the WFCC guidelines, it is pointed out that collections should publish online or printed catalogue regularly to disseminate information of strains to promote scientific and industrial usages of holdings. However, according to the statistics, only nearly one-sixth of collections registered in CCINFO have their online catalogue, which greatly hinders the visibility and hence the accessibility of strains.
WDCM will construct a data management system and a global catalogue to help organize, unveil and explore the data resources of its member collections.