Pune will soon have Asia’s largest microbial centre

Pune is getting ready to house Asia’s largest repository of microbial culture. A memorandum of association (MOA) to this effect between the National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS) and the Department of Bio-Technology (DBT) will be signed in the presence of Union minister of science and technology Kapil Sibal in New Delhi on July 14.Microbial culture is a method of multiplying microbial organisms by letting them reproduce in predetermined culture media under controlled laboratory conditions. It is one of the primary diagnostic methods of microbiology and used as a tool to determine the cause of infectious disease.The centre will preserve more than 2 lakh diverse microbes and is expected to boost pharmaceutical activities in the country. A total of Rs 40 crores has been sanctioned for the first phase of five years. NCCS is at present trying to identify land in order to set up the repository and will temporarily work from one of its buildings in Kothrud.Since microbes are producers of various bioactive compounds like antiinfective, anti-diabetic, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer and other industrial enzymes, the repository will serve as an exclusive centre for research to gauge the potential of these microbes.Due to global warming and climactic changes, chances are that some of these microbes could eventually be lost.The preservation of these microbes would help in all kinds of research activities in the long run.The microbes will be collected from marine environments, sediment, water, mangroves, soil, forest and so on.The collected microbials will be screened, identified and preserved for long-term storage.The NCCS already has 30,000 microbial cultures in its possession.The full-fledged set up of this ambitious project will have three prominent compartments: identification and characterisation, storage and training.The international depository authority requires storage of microbes in two forms. But the storage in the proposed repository will be made in three forms. They are minus 70 degrees storage, liquid nitrogen storage and freezed dried storage.