From August 24 to 27, International Symposium on Management and Utilization of Microbial Resources and Fungal DNA Barcoding was held at Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMCAS). The event is hosted by Bureau of Life Sciences and Biotechnology (BLSB) and IMCAS and co-sponsored by CAS and National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Microbiologists and managers of the culture collections from 15 countries of Europe, North and South America and Asia attended the symposium.

Representatives from the culture collections introduced their experience and expertise on management of microbial resources and biotechnology development on microbial potentials. The symposium provided a platform for all the attendee in sharing the knowledge, techniques and application of microbial functions, and in establishing an intimate linkage between microbial resources and application, so that to facilitate the translation of resources to biotechnology innovation.

Scientists introduced their research projects on fungal DNA barcoding. DNA barcoding is a new tool for species identification based on a short conserved DNA sequence. It has been used to develop and correct traditional taxonomy research, which is helpful to culture collection.

After the symposium, some representatives had a site visiting to IMCAS-BRC, Mycological Herbarium, State Key Laboratory of Microbial Resources (SKLMR) and CAS Key Laboratory of Systematic Mycology & Lichenology.