NAPIS® Collection: Microorganism Source Material
From the NAPIS main menu select Collection | Microorganisms | Source Material Data to open a Microorganism Source Material Record.
Source material samples are microorganism bearing substrates collected for culture plating and dereplication of the colony-forming units that represent taxonomically distinct isolates (a collection). As defined in NAPIS, the source material samples may be soils, non-soils, organisms, or corresponding collections. One Site may have many Source Materials.
With the scroll buttons in the tool-bar, you can view the sequence of Source Material records.
The 'Site' button in the tool-bar opens the corresponding Site Data record, and the 'Isolate' button opens the associated Microorganism Isolate Record.
The Source Type is explained below.
The Sample Handling Container, Status, and Storage fields are a common feature throughout NAPIS where material sample quantities are tracked.
The MicroSource 'Set' button opens the Set the Microorganism Source Type dialog shown below, where users can select values from customizable lists for each category. Method defines the tool used to make the collection; the Fome is the microorganism bearing substrate; and Quality is a qualitative descriptor. This simple concept supports the vastly different microorganism source material collections that can be made (such as soil samples, water from the center of a hot-spring, ice-cores from 2 kilometers down, or a crustacean carapace collected while diving at a depth of 70 feet).
The General Notes field is for recording knowledge about the micro source. It is not searchable in the database, but may be used in reporting.
MICROORGANISM SOURCE MATERIAL TYPES
Each Source Type selected by the radio-button changes the appearance of the upper right of the form, providing different methods for data-entry.
SOIL
Soil samples, often just a teaspoon-sized scoop of soil, are the most typical microorganism source type. They are Aerobic or Anaerobic, may be linked to a Soil Class, and can be obtained from different Depths in the substrate. The sample's Color, pH and Temperature can be recorded on this form.
NON-SOIL
Non-soils, another typical microorganism source type, may be self-heating materials like manure or may be leaf litter, water, ice, air, swabs, etc.
ORGANISM
Macroorganism tissues bear microorganisms that are useful in drug-discovery, such as endophytic fungi or symbiotic microorganisms from marine sponges. On this form, users can quickly enter the taxonomy information for a collection of this type.
CORRESPONDING COLLECTION
Many researchers who collect macroorganism biomass samples save microorganism source material samples from the same collection. In such a case, users can define the corresponding macroorganism collection and streamline the data-entry process while maintaining important links.
