News

The BGSC is pleased to announce that the phage containing strain CMJ114 is now available in our collection. CMJ114 is a B. subtilis strain that contains the temperature-sensitive SPBeta lysogen with a wild type yonE allele.
This strain can be found under the BSGC accession number 1L57.

Thank you to Janet Smith from the Grossman lab at MIT for generously donating this strain!

The BSGC is pleased to provide two strains from a suite of CRISPRi systems that combines modularity, stable genomic integration and ease of transfer to diverse bacteria by conjugation. These strains are CAG80612 (BGSC ID 1A1640) and CAG81072 (BGSC ID 1A1641) and were generously donated by Dr. Jason Peters from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The BGSC is pleased to announce the availability of five new integration vectors, pBSAND1, pBSAND2, pBSANDdel, pBSANDlux, and pBSGGlux. These plasmids are available under the accession numbers ECE801-ECE805.

The plasmid designated pBSAND1 (ECE801) can be linearized using ScaI to allow for integration in B. subtilis at thrC. The plasmid designated pBSAND2 (ECE802) can be linearized using NgoMIV to allow for integration in B. subtilis at lacA. The plasmid pBSANDdel (ECE803) cuts upstream of the gene rsoI and allows for removal of the entire sigO-rsoA operon in B. subtilis W168. When utilised with plasmids pBSAND1-PliaI and pBSAND2-PxylA, pBSANDlux (ECE804) allows for bacitracin and xylose inducible luciferase output. The plasmid pBSGGlux (ECE805) can be linearized using ScaI for integration in B. subtilis at the sacA locus.

Thank you to Susanne Gebhard at University of Bath for generously donating these plasmids to our collection.

The BGSC is pleased to announce the availability of the new TnFLX transposon system in Bacillus subtilis. The plasmids, which are available in the catalog as ECE797-ECE800, can be used to generate internal markerless fusions to fluorescent protein reporters. These plasmids can be used to produce protein fusions in Bacillus subtilis that introduce fluorescence and preserve functionality. This is a useful tool for investigating protein localization in vivo.

Thank you very much to the Daniel Kearns lab at Indiana University for donating these materials to our collection.

The BGSC is pleased to announce the availability of four new integration vectors, pXFP_bglStar, to generate low noise fluorescent promoter fusions to insert into the bglS locus in Bacillus subtilis. They are available in the catalog under the BGSC IDs ECE793-ECE796.

These will add on to the pXFP_Star vector suite (ECE295-ECE297) which buffer against spurious transcription by having a terminator.

Thank you to Dr. Ilka Bischofs-Pfeifer of the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Biology for donating these vectors.

Thanks to the generosity of many researchers in the field of Bacillus research, we have accepted donations for several new strains over the past year. We are happy to announce that those strains have now be added to our online catalog and are available for order. Please be on the lookout for more announcements as we introduce these new strains.

Thank you all for your patience during our transition! We're scaling down our COVID-19 testing operation and that has allowed us much needed time to catch-up. We recently completed a transition from a manual credit card console to an online credit card payment processing system. This allows us to send you a direct payment link through email, providing you the flexibility to complete payment at your convenience. We're also working hard on a new website with integrated payment processing which we hope to launch this fall.

Please direct all inquiries to our new email address - asc-microbioservice@osu.edu. Our team will follow-up with you by email and can schedule calls as needed. Thank you!

Jeff

As many of you have heard, I am retiring from Ohio State on 28 February and will be working as an independent consultant. Beginning 1 March, the BGSC will have a new collection manager, Jeff Jahnes. Jeff came to Ohio State in 2013, first serving as Laboratory Supervisor for the Department of Microbiology, then in 2019 assuming the directorship for the Applied Microbiology Services Lab (AMSL) at Ohio State's Infectious Diseases Institute. As the pandemic unfolded, Jeff was charged with developing and managing the COVID-19 testing facility that serves Ohio State's 50,000+ students. He's done a fantastic job in these positions, so I feel fortunate that he has agreed to direct the BGSC. Strain maintenance and distribution will continue uninterrupted during the transition, but please be patient: Jeff and his team do face a bit of a learning curve as they implement and eventually improve upon our systems. Jeff's contact information is below:

email: ASC-microbioservice@osu.edu

office: +1 614-292-3490

I want to thank the Bacillus research community for all the positive interactions and teamwork over the last 35 years. Our field seems to attract talented, interesting, creative people who value collaboration. I hope to stay active in science through consulting, editing, and writing. If you want to get in touch with me, my OSU email address should remain active (zeigler.1@osu.edu). Best wishes for a safe and productive 2021--and beyond!