The International Center of Microbial Resources (CIRM) is a Biological Resource Center created by INRA (the French National Agronomical Research Institute) in 2004. It preserves over 15,000 strains in five dedicated sites: food bacteria (Rennes), pathogenic bacteria (Tours), lignocellulotytic filamentous fungi (Marseilles), phytopathogenic bacteria (Angers) and hemiascomycetous yeasts (Grignon).
The CIRM-Levures (http://www.inra.fr/cirmlevures) preserves and distributes over 1200 hemiascomycetous yeasts, most of them isolated from French traditional fermentation, and a bank of several hundred thousand genomic clones from the French sequencing program, Genolevures. The CIRM-Levures performs a number of services including taxonomic identification to the species level and confidential safe deposit. It has been ISO 9001 certified since 2006.
In addition, the CIRM-Levures develops research projects on yeast taxonomy and genomics. It participates in several collaborative projects,
including the EC Infrastructure project EMbaRC.
Stéphanie WEISS,
Serge CASAREGOLA
CIRM-Levures
Micalis UMR INRA 1319, AgroParisTech
78850 Thiverval-Grignon, France
Mathématique Informatique et Génome (MIG)
UR INRA 1077, Domaine de Vilvert
78352 Jouy-en-Josas, France