USCCN at ASM Microbe 2025 – Meeting Report

June 20, 2025 - June 22, 2025

Location

Los Angeles, CA, USA

Meeting Report

The U.S. Culture Collection Network (USCCN) participated in ASM Microbe 2025 in Los Angeles, engaging with researchers and collection managers from across the microbial sciences community.

Attendees from around the world visited the USCCN booth in the Exhibit Hall — staffed by Dusti Gallagher (USCCN Project Manager), Kyria Boundy-Mills (USCCN Steering Committee member), Lori Leach and Isabelle Caugant (both from the Phytobiomes Alliance) — to learn about the USCCN Registry of Living Microbial Culture Collections. This searchable, online tool documents who maintains which strains, where collections are located, and how to get in touch. The response was highly positive. A common reaction was, “What you are doing is great.”

Over the course of three days, booth staff engaged with more than 100 attendees per day, discussing USCCN’s efforts to support, preserve, and connect microbial collections. More than 70 individuals created accounts on the USCCN website during the meeting, with over 40 identifying as managers of culture collections — ranging from large institutional repositories to smaller, scientifically valuable, lab-based collections. This reinforces a key message shared throughout the event: “If you maintain living microbes in your lab, you are part of the culture collection community and your contribution matters.”

On Friday, June 20, Dusti Gallagher presented a poster titled “The U.S. Culture Collection Network — A Central Resource for Microbe Culture Collections and Their Users,” offering an additional opportunity to introduce the Registry and its goals.

Swag items at the booth — microbe keychains, stickers, pens, and sticky notes — were popular with visitors, and the staff’s “I Love Microbes” t-shirts received many compliments!

👉 Get involved or register your collection: https://usccn.org