About CCALA culture collection
The main objective of the Culture Collection of Autotrophic Organisms (CCALA) is to collect a number of important and interesting clonal cultures of algae and cyanobacteria from various aspects; specialized sub-collections include isolates of polar, snow and thermal springs or terrestrial heterocytic cyanobacteria. Reference ("type") cultures are also maintained in the CCALA collection, i.e. the material on the basis of which genera and species new to science were described.
CCALA collection is a member of the World Federation for Culture Collections (WFCC) and the World Data Centre for Microorganisms (WDCM).
We offer strains, culture media for teaching, research and commercial use. We are accepting new unialgal/unicyanobacterial strains and clonal cultures of mosses that are of environmental, biochemical, taxonomic or commercial importance.
Our collection in numbers
- The original collection was established in 1961 and has been part of the Institute of Institute of Botany of the CAS, v. v. i. since 1979.
- The collection maintains isolates of cyanobacteria and algae from more than 50 countries, including isolates from the Arctic and Antarctica
- CCALA collection has three members of staff at this moment, Josef Juráň (curator), Vlasta Titlová and Bohuslava Zahradníková (technicians).
Brief history of the collection
Culture collection of Autotrophic Organisms (CCALA) is one of the oldest world’s algal culture collections building on a long history of cultivating cyanobacteria and algae. It was started already in 1913 by V. Uhlíř at the Charles University in Prague. His strains unfortunately died during the 1st World War and the basis of current collection was formed by strains gathered by Prof. E.G. Pringsheim at the German part of the Charles University.
The Culture Collection of Algae at Laboratory of Algology in Třeboň was founded in 1961 by Jiří Komárek and later enlarged by František Hindák with a high number of original isolates, mainly chlorococcal algae. In 1979, the CCALA collection formed at the Institute of Botany by merging algal collections from Třeboň and Charles University in Prague, of which the latter one contained original cultures of Robert Chodat (1865-1934), Silvestr Prát (1895 - 1990), Ernest George Pringsheim (1881 - 1970) or Viktor Czurda (1897 - 1945) and non-seed plant cultures of G. Lorbeer and Milan Keil. CCALA collection is gradually being extended with new isolates.