The Centre for Animal Biological Resources

Created by a project of the first Investments for the Future Program, the CRB-Anim infrastructure aims to integrate and strengthen biological resource centers (BRCs) conserving reproductive material and genomic material for domestic animal species farmed in France, mammals, birds, fish and shellfish.

CRB-Anim is labelled IBISA and INRAE Collective Scientific Infrastructure (ISC).

The CRB-Anim Biological Resource Center enables secure sample management, characterization and distribution, as well as the provision of experimental procedures and tools for data analysis.

The CRB-Anim infrastructure brings together public research organizations (INRAE, CNRS), higher education institutions (University of Rennes I, AgroParisTech, National Veterinary Schools, Oniris), and a private platform, the company ANTAGENE, which host genomic collections for breeders.

This national infrastructure has 6 nodes located near Paris, Rennes, Nantes, Lyon and Guadeloupe. The facility's BRCs store approximately 600,000 biological samples (seed, embryos, cells, tissues, DNA, RNA). These nodes are linked to research partners from IFREMER and INSERM, professional livestock organizations, animal insemination centers and National Veterinary Schools.

CRB-Anim responds to two national research and innovation priorities in health, food, well-being, and environmental emergency for the preservation of biodiversity.

Infrastructure responds to two major challenges for science and society:

• the erosion of biodiversity, especially in farmed species subject to intensive selection,
• and the rise of genomics, which opens a new era to understand the relationships between phenotype and genotype and to value the phenotypic richness resulting from the domestication of animals.

This research needs to be able to access characterized biological samples and to have cryoprep tools

Contact : Michèle Tixier-Boichard