Budapest Treaty - Depositable Subject Matter

Depositable Subject Matter

IDA's have accepted deposits for biological materials which do not fall within a literal interpretation of "microorganism". The Treaty does not define what is meant by “microorganism.”

The range of materials able to be deposited under the Budapest Treaty includes:

• cells, for example, bacteria, fungi, eucaryotic cell lines, plant spores;
• genetic vectors (such as plasmids or bacteriophage vectors or viruses) containing a gene or DNA fragments;
• organisms used for expression of a gene (making the protein from the DNA).

There are many types of expression systems: bacterial; yeast; viral; plant or animal cell cultures;

• yeast, algae, protozoa, eucaryotic cells, cell lines, hybridomas, viruses, plant tissue cells, spores, and hosts containing materials such as vectors, cell organelles, plasmids, DNA, RNA, genes and chromosomes;
• purified nucleic acids; or
• deposits of materials not readily classifiable as microorganisms, such as “naked” DNA, RNA, or plasmids