AHMII: Agent to help microbial information integration

Abstract

Reproducibility is the key to science. Therefore, the fidelity of organisms, particularly type strains, used in molecular biology must be authenticated before embarking on a series of experiments. In the case of microbes the authentic strain can be obtained from a culture collection. However, tracking down a culture collection that possesses the strain can be an arduous task. With this in mind we have developed a one-stop search engine for bacteria, fungi, yeasts and cell lines that indicates which collections carry the strain of interest. The search agent is named Agent to Help Microbial Information Integration (AHMII) and the URL address is http://www.wdcm.org/AHMII/ahmii.html.