National Gnotobiotic Resource Center

Broad use of our facility’s gnotobiotic mice by multidisciplinary users depends on widespread knowledge/visibility of our resource, easy access for ordering mice, strong support and feedback by our leadership team and delivery of a validated, consistent product with consistent and reliable results. Our Curation and Informatics component will validate and share our strains’ genetic background and phenotypes; catalogue our bacterial and fecal donor stocks; apply leading standards to our informatics and management practices; improve our website’s content, access, and feedback potential; improve our repository’s accuracy and depth; and train our personnel in cutting-edge techniques for informatics management and website design. Our goal is to improve access and awareness of our national resource, as well as the accuracy, reliability and quality of our services to promote improved Rigor and Reproducibility in the use of our services. These goals will be achieved through the following Specific Aims: 1. Improve the curation of our validated germ-free (GF) mouse, bacterial strain and human healthy and diseased fecal donor and mouse-adapted fecal stocks. We will provide genetic and phenotypic information for each GF mouse strain that we offer. We will link this information to other ORIP- supported resources, such as the MMRRCs and the Collaborative Cross (CC). 2. Use best practices for informatics management that comply with high industry standards using the FAIR and TRUST principles. 3. Improve access, information content, ordering and resource tracing and user feedback of our existing web portal. 4. Improve the reporting outcomes of our resource. 5. Train our staff to improve their informatics management skills, reporting efficiency and webpage development. Successful completion of these Aims will provide more completely validated gnotobiotic mice and microbial materials for more reproducible outcomes by our users, easier access to more extensive and helpful website information, and inclusion of more complete and accurate information on outcomes in our annual reports, renewal applications and potential supplemental funding requests.