Future of biobanking in microbiology for medical research

Biobanks are actively contributing to advances in biomedical research by offering opportunities to link laboratory research with clinical applications and by accelerating developments in personalized medicine. Microbiologists have a long tradition of storing microorganisms as part of projects focused on microbial genetics or phenotypic investigations. However, the impressive recent advances of biomedical translational research demand the integration of blobanks with high-level technological infrastructures in genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, patient information systems and disease registries, where data originating from microorganisms are linked with human clinical information with the ultimate aim of improving healthcare by increasing the quality of biomedical research.