The Arabidopsis Biological Resource Center (ABRC) – Community Resources for the Future

Since its establishment in 1991, the ABRC has been serving the plant research community by collecting, propagating and maintaining resources of Arabidopsis thaliana, and making them available worldwide. Our holdings contain seed stocks, DNA resources including vectors and clones, host strains, protein resources represented by protein chips, cell cultures, and the most recently added educational resources. The collection has expanded to include resources from other Brassicas and has nearly reached one million accessions. About 100,000 stocks are distributed annually to over 14,000 researchers in 63 countries. The most frequently ordered seed resources include T-DNA and transposon insertion lines, RNAi and transgenic expression lines, as well as natural accessions. Among the most popular DNA resources are ORF entry and expression clones and cloning vectors. Educational resources have been highly requested and we plan on expanding this category further. The catalog and other information are available at abrc.osu.edu. Functionality allowing stock searching, ordering/payment functions, and stock details is provided by The Arabidopsis Information Resource (TAIR, www.arabidopsis.org). Besides funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and other sources, the donation of materials by the international community has been the mechanism to sustain the collection. Donations are exchanged with the European Arabidopsis Stock Centre (NASC). The donation of new materials, including educational resources, is always appreciated. 

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Award Number DBI-1049341. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.