Culture Collection of Cryophilic Algae

The Culture Collection of Cryophilic Algae (CCCryo) is hosted at the Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering IBMT in Potsdam-Golm near Berlin. The CCCryo is specialised on cryophilic freshwater and permafrost microalgae from polar and alpine environments, the so-called snow algae. First strains were collected on an expedition to Spitsbergen in 1999 and since then research on the phylogeny, ecology, and adaptations of this group of extremophiles is being performed at the IBMT.