biology

National Collection of Type Cultures

National Collection of Type Cultures is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand National Collection of Type Cultures rather than just read about it. In short: National Collection of Type Cultures (NCTC) is one of the four culture collections that constitute the Culture Collections operated by the UK Health Security Agency. It is a non-profit culture collection repository located in the UK.

Key takeaways

National Collection of Type Cultures belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect National Collection of Type Cultures to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of National Collection of Type Cultures from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

National Collection of Type Cultures (NCTC) is one of the four culture collections that constitute the Culture Collections operated by the UK Health Security Agency. It is a non-profit culture collection repository located in the UK. NCTC maintains over 5100 bacterial cultures, over 100 Mycoplasmas and more than 500 plasmids, host strains, bacteriophages, and transposons. Of these, 150 strains are available from NCTC in the form of bacterial DNA, supplied at 2 μg, making them suitable for whole genome sequencing amongst other molecular applications. The cultures represent bacteria from widespread geographical locations and are transported in fused-glass ampoules. The NCTC was founded in 1920 with John Charles Grant Ledingham, who was previously chief bacteriologist at the Lister Institute, serving as its first director. The Lister Institute, along with the Medical Research Council, oversaw the founding of the collection. The first strain to be added to the collection—termed NCTC1—was an isolate of Shigella flexneri, a causative agent of bacillary dysentery, cultured in 1915 from a man believed to have been a British soldier in the First World War. Mabel Rhodes, the first assistant curator of the NCTC, recounted that the collection's initial premises at the Lister Institute "contained nothing but a telephone" and that bacteriological equipment had to be borrowed from other departments. Safety protocols at the time were poor, and during the early years of the organisation three staff members contracted tularemia. Bacterial strains were initially provided free of charge and were transported live on an agar medium. In five years' time, the collection had grown from about 200 strains acquired from the Lister Institute to over 1500. In 1939, the NCTC moved from the Lister Institute building in Chelsea, London to a small farmhouse in Elstree, Hertfordshire; ten years later, the collection moved to the Central Public Health Laboratory in Colindale, London, where the mass production of lyophilized cultures began. A plasmid collection was established in 1985.

References

External links NCTC home page

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with National Collection of Type Cultures

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what National Collection of Type Cultures claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to National Collection of Type Cultures before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about National Collection of Type Cultures ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of National Collection of Type Cultures

In research: National Collection of Type Cultures appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses National Collection of Type Cultures in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: National Collection of Type Cultures is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Biological research institutes in the United Kingdom, Culture collections, Microbiology organizations, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for National Collection of Type Cultures outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study National Collection of Type Cultures in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what National Collection of Type Cultures means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain National Collection of Type Cultures out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is National Collection of Type Cultures in simple terms?

Why does National Collection of Type Cultures matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study National Collection of Type Cultures?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on National Collection of Type Cultures.