EMMA projects - EMMAservice activities
The EMMAservice project is an Integrated Infrastructure Initiative (I3) combining, in a closely co-ordinated manner: (i) Networking activities, (ii) Trans-national access and/or service activities and (iii) Joint research activities. All three categories of activities are mandatory as synergistic effects are expected from these different components. Further details of I3 initiatives and TA activities are provided in the WORK PROGRAMME 2009 CAPACITIES PART 1 RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURES (European Commission C(2008)4566 of 26 August 2008), page 20-21.
Networking activities
EMMAservice will fully integrate three new partners into EMMA leading to a significantly increased archiving and distribution capacity and to the representation of a new member state in the network.
Outreach efforts to attract new EMMA users will be widened and will specifically target the human genetics and translational research communities.
Existing training courses in state of the art cryopreservation technologies will be continued and complemented with a new course format that aims to promote the shipment of frozen mouse resources.
Transnational Access activity
EMMA's distribution service is based on a cost recovery system. However, EMMAservice will support eligible customers by providing free of charge Transnational Access to its mouse resources in response to a defined number of requests.
Joint research activities
The main focus of the EMMAservice Joint Research Activities will be the cryopreservation of 1224 new mouse mutant lines. The majority of this 'free of charge' service will support strain donations from INDIVIDUAL RESEARCHERS but EuroMouse programmes such as EUCOMM, EUMODIC, MUGEN and FLPFLEX among others will also benefit.
EMMA's germ-free service will support the generation of germ-free mouse models and in addition maintain lines of general interest as live stocks in germ-free conditions. Live mice, tissues or fluids from mouse lines introduced and/or maintained in germ-free housing will be distributed.
Technology development will underpin the EMMA cryopreservation service by focussing on refining existing EMMA sperm freezing technologies. The overall objectives will be to reduce the costs and improve the efficiency with which mouse stocks can be cryopreserved via sperm and recovered from the archive, to reduce strain specificity and to minimise animal usage associated with EMMA's services.
EMMA informatics activities will support the networking and service activities through computational and manual data curation. Thus ensuring the highest possible quality of the strain related data for EMMA users and facilitating the data's integration with other mouse resources by extensive cross referencing. Deploying an advanced BioMart query interface will further augment user support and services.