NIBB CENTER OF THE INTERUNIVERSITY
BIO-BACKUP PROJECT (IBBP CENTER)

Head and Specially Appointed Professor

NARUSE, Kiyoshi

Technical Staff:
Research Staff:
Technical Assistant:

AKIMOTO-KATO, Ai
TANAKA, Ayako
MATSUBAYASHI, Naomi
MIZOKAMI, Yuko
TSUZUKI, Chizuru
HAMATANI, Ayako

In order to realize the vision of a life science community that can withstand natural disasters and calamities,
the National Institutes for Natural Sciences (NINS) andHokkaido University, Tohoku University, Universityof Tokyo, Nagoya University, Kyoto University, Osaka
University, and Kyushu University finalized an agreement onJune 1st 2012 to launch a system to ‘back up’ the biologicalresources essential to the work being done at universities andresearch institutions nationwide, called the ‘Interuniversity
Bio-Backup Project (IBBP)’.
The IBBP Center was established as a centralized backup
and storage facility at NIBB, while IBBP member universities have set up satellite hubs and work closely with theIBBP center to put in place reciprocal systems for backing up
important biological resources that have been developed byresearchers residing in the area each university satellite hub
is responsible for.

The IBBP Center includes:⃝earthquake proof structures capable of withstanding evenvery large-scale quakes which are equipped with emergency backup power generators,⃝cryopreservation facilities equipped with automatic liquid
nitrogen feeding systems,⃝deep freezers, and refrigerated storage (mainly for seedstocks),
as well as all manner of automated laboratory equipment,
cell culture tools, and the latest equipment necessary toback up the genetic resources in a collaborative manner. The
specific preservation methods used are the freezing of animal
sperm and eggs, cultured plant and animal cells, proteins andgene libraries. Plant seeds are frozen or refrigerated.
When university satellite hubs receive preservation requests
involving biological resources from researchers, they reportto the Managing Project Committee of IBBP (which iscomprised of NIBB faculty members and other satellite institutes), where the relevance of the request is reviewed. If therequest is approved, the biological resources that are to bepreserved will be sent to the IBBP Center by the requesting
researcher, where they will be frozen (or refrigerated), andtheir particulars registered into a database. In the event of adisaster leading to the loss of a researcher’s own biologicalresources, preserved samples will be promptly returned to theresearcher so they can quickly resume their work.
Through the development of this backup system biologicalresources that had only been stored at individual research
institutes can now be preserved at the IBBP Center’s stateof the art facilities. As a result of this, Japan’s research infrastructure has been significantly strengthened.

I. C urrent status of back up available forbiological resources

Figure 1. IBBP Center.

In 2021, the IBBP Center stored 5,264 384-well and 112
96-well plates consisting of as cDNA/BAC clones, 17,669
tubes for animal cells, plant and animal samples, proteins,genes and microorganisms, 8,498 133mm-straw tubes forsperm and 671 seed samples. In total 2,049,024 samples
were stored.

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National Institute for Basic Biology

Research Support

during freezing and drying of aqueous solutions of lyophilized pharmaceuticals, the analysis of amino acid and genecomposition, elucidation of biochemical and physicochemical properties, structure-function relationship analysis, anddevelopment of mass production technology for several
antifreeze proteins from Japanese plants and animals and thefundamentals of successful cryopreservation as well as recent
preservation methods and facilities.

Figure 3. Cryo tube with 2D barcode. Each sample is printed with aunique barcode and is managed using a database.

II. C ollaborative Research Project for thedevelopment of new long-term storage
technologies and cryo-biological study
As the IBBP Center can only accept biological resources
which can be cryopreserved in liquid nitrogen, researchers
cannot backup biological resources for which cryopreservation methods are not well established. In order to increase
the usability of IBBP, we started a collaborative research
project for the development of new long-term storage technologies and cryo-biological study in 2013. This collaborative research focuses on two goals: 1) The establishment of
new storage technologies for biological resources for which
long-term storage is unavailable. 2) Basic cryobiologicalresearch enabling us to improve low temperature storage
for biological resources. In 2021, we have conducted 10
collaborative research projects aimed at achieving thesegoals. We also worked to establish a research center forcryo-biological study thorough this Collaborative ResearchProject. Accordingly, we organized the Cryopreservation
Conference 2021 on November 11-12, 2021 online, becauseof the COVID-19 pandemic. We had 227 participants fromseveral fields covering physics, chemistry, biology, and technology. As the special lectures, We had 4 special lectures,the current status of the preservation of cultured cells andgerm cells of endangered species at the National Institutefor Environmental Studies, the relationship between protein
conformational changes and additive properties that occurFigure 4. Group photo of Cryopreservation conference 2021

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