Website: www.unito.it

The University of Turin (UNITO) is one of the most ancient and prestigious Italian Universities. It hosts about 70000 students, 4000 academic, administrative and technical staff, 1800 post-graduate and post-doctoral students in 120 buildings in different areas in Turin and in key places in Piedmont. Today, UNITO is one of the largest Italian Universities, open to international research and training. It carries out scientific research and organises courses in all disciplines, except for Engineering and Architecture. The traditional missions of the University of Torino, focusing on teaching and research, have been extended to the so-called Third Mission, which has become a major policy concern in recent years. The Third Mission has assumed an increasingly crucial and strategic role in dealing with the territory and the society with the aim to generate knowledge outside academic environments to the benefit of the social, cultural and economic development.

The Turin University Culture Collections (TUCC) puts together more than 10000 microbial resources (including, bacteria, yeasts, filamentous fungi) coming from different Departments. Within the TUCC, the Mycotheca Universitatis Taurinensis (MUT) is the fungal collection of the Department of Life Sciences and Systems Biology. MUT operates according to the standards of ISO 9001 and currently preserves about 6000 fungal strains from more than 1100 species, coming from different environment and ecologic niches. The aims of the TUCC are the acquisition, identification, characterisation, preservation and distribution of microorganisms to support research and bio-based economy.