News – CCAP

Over 2500 strains of algae, protozoa, cyanobacteria & small seaweeds

CCAP is Europe's largest and most diverse service collection for living strains from marine, freshwater and terrestrial environments, and a growing collection of polar diatoms.

Our Cultures

Strain catalogue and knowledgebase

Our searchable database and store contains data on each strain, including origin, maintenance information, references and sequencing data. We also supply culture media.

CCAP Catalogue

We can keep your strains safe for the future

We securely cryopreserve or maintain commercially valuable strains; we are an International Depositary Authority for strains that are part of a Patent application.

Our services

As well as living starter cultures and safe deposits, CCAP can also offer users the following services: taxonomy and molecular sequencing, DNA extracts, algal/protistan culturing advice, training and more.

Research and collaborations

CCAP is involved in several research projects with SAMS colleagues and external collaborators, including several genome sequencing projects.

CCAP Research

New CCAP Website

Welcome to CCAP’s new website and webshop. This new site should be fully responsive and viewable on all sizes of screen and has a new shop which allows us to expand our range of products and payment options. If you have any problems navigating the site or spot any errors or glitches please contact us on ccap@sams.ac.uk

New CCAP Delivery Manager

Starting in September 2021, we welcome Dr Michael (Mikey) Ross to the CCAP team as Delivery Manager. Mikey is a phycologist with an interest in all things algae. To date, he has cultivated algae for a variety of purposes including aquaculture feed, bioenergy, bioremediation of nutrients and heavy metals, CO₂ sequestration, and for the production of high-value compounds. Mikey’s main role within CCAP will be to manage and authorise the CCAP budget and ensure delivery of contracts and reporting; he also will have overall responsibility for the new CCAP-ARIES facility.

As well as his role in CCAP, Mikey is also a Senior Researcher in Algal Biotechnology within SAMS and is working on several algae projects.

Christine Campbell retires after 35 years

The end of an era; Christine Campbell MBE retired today after 35 years working for CCAP and SAMS, from curator to CCAP Head of Facility. Christine has been awarded a SAMS Honorary Fellowship in recognition of her contribution and so will not be leaving entirely!

Among gifts from CCAP colleagues was a framed picture of three algal strains Christine isolated herself, one collected from her garden pond – a source of several CCAP freshwater strains!

We wish Christine a long and happy retirement, she will be missed.

Bioinformatics Gateway

Visit our new CCAP Bioinformatics Gateway – easy access to CCAP sequence data. This is a central platform allowing users to browse and access sequences, meta-data and results – view taxonomy, phylogenetic trees, or BLAST a sequence, as well as listing references citing CCAP strains.

CCAP – ARIES

CCAP – ARIES: Algae Research, Innovation and Environmental Science Centre

Algal biotechnology is an exciting field of applied phycology and CCAP is extending its services to accommodate this growing area. In 2021 we will be expanding our service with a new facility for users. The Algal Research, Innovation and Environmental Science Centre (ARIES) will offer new analytical capability with the capacity to grow and harvest 100s of litres of culture and carry out metabolomic and genomic analyses.

For more information visit our ARIES webpage

We also won funding to continue and develop work on the CCAP Bioinformatics Gateway for Algal and Protistan Genomics.

New Papers

CCAP has five recent publications covering the systematics and ecology of Coleps and Ulvophyceae; exploring the chemical diversity of macro- and microalgae; the patenting of mcicroalgae and cryopreservation of the blastocladialean pathogen Paraphysoderma:

Darienko T, Rad-Menéndez C, Campbell CN & Pröschold T (2021) Molecular phylogeny of unicellular marine coccoid green algae revealed new insights into the systematics of the Ulvophyceae (Chlorophyta). Microorganisms, 9(8):1586. DOI: 10.3390/microorganisms908158 6

Pröschold T, Rieser D, Darienko T, Nachbaur L, Kammerlander B, Qian K, Pitsch G, Bruni E, Qu Z, Forster D, Rad-Menéndez C, Posch T, Stoeck T & Sonntag B (2021) An integrative approach sheds new light onto the systematics and ecology of the widespread ciliate genus Coleps (Ciliophora, Prostomatea). Scientific Reports, 11:5916. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-84265-y

Hughes AH, Magot F, Tawfike A, Rad-Menéndez C, Thomas N, Young LC, Stucchi L, Carettoni D, Stanley MS, Edrada-Ebel R & Duncan KR (2021) Exploring the chemical space of macro- and micro-algae using comparative metabolomics. Microorganisms, 9: 311. DOI: 10.3390/microorganisms9020311

Saxon RJ, Rad-Menéndez C & Campbell CN (2020) Patent depositing of algal strains. Applied Phycology. DOI: 10.1080/26388081.2020.1770124

Find this and other related articles in a special issue of Applied Phycology journal: Algal Culture Collections in the -Omics Age.

Strittmatter M, Rad-Menéndez C & Gachon CMM (2020) Cryopreservation of the parasitic and saprophytic life stages of the blastocladialean pathogen Paraphysoderma sedebokerense infecting the green algae Haematococcus pluvialis and Scenedesmus dimorphus. Phycologia 59(6): 566-570. DOI: 10.1080/00318884.2020.1827825

Image created with BioRender.com