Mission (About us)

The International Moss Stock Center (IMSC) offers scientists, research institutions, industrial enterprises and other facilities to safely1) store their back-up moss samples in its cryobank. The IMSC preserves moss mutants, transgenic lines and ecotypes.

For scientists and researchers, it provides traceable accession numbers of their newly established mutants or newly collected ecotypes to be included into their publications as demanded by the journals2) and to ensure replicability of research results.

For industrial and clinical enterprises it offers the possibility to store their samples in Master Cell Banks (MCBs)3). In this case, the samples are treated confidentially.

The IMSC is a not-for-profit service developed, hosted, managed and financed by the ReskiLab  at the University of Freiburg, Germany since it was established in 2010.

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References:

1) For Physcomitrella patens it has been shown that the regeneration rate after cryopreservation is 100 %. See: Schulte, J. and R. Reski (2004): High-throughput cryopreservation of 140,000 Physcomitrella patens mutants. Plant Biology 6, 119-127.
Moss plants have been shown to survive freezing for as many as 1,530 years. See: Glausiusz, J (2014): Tough as Old Moss. The American Scholar. visited (4 May 2017)

2) See: Small moss turns out professional. Gesundheitsindustrie-BW from 21st May 2010 (visited 3rd March 2020)
or in German: Kleines Moos wird professionell. Gesundheitsindustrie-BW vom 21. Mai 2010 (abgerufen am 3rd March 2020)

3) Moss well invested. Plant-Biotech.net (visited 23 May 2017)
or in German: Moos gut angelegt. Plant-Biotech.net (abgerufen 23. Mai 2017)

Affiliation

International Moss Stock Center (IMSC)

University of Freiburg
Plant Biotechnology
Schaenzlestrasse 1
D-79104 Freiburg
Germany