The Bacillus Genetic Stock Center BGSC – Home was established through funding from the National Science Foundation, and it’s first director, Dr. Donald H. Dean (OSU professor of Genetics and Microbiology), began distributing collected industrial and environmental strains in 1979. Under the leadership of Dr. Dean and his successor, Dr. Dan Zeigler, the collection grew to over 13,000 strains and plasmids for genetic manipulations within the Bacillus family The Bacillus Genetic Stock Center/Bacillus subtilis | 3 | CRC Press. Today we continue to add state of the art Bacillus resources for industry and academic researchers deposited by the greater community, including rare strains, genome-wide gene deletion libraries, and more. In the 1980’s, nearly 2500 strains were distributed annually, a number that has steadily grown to 5000-10,000 strains shipped worldwide every year. We look forward to maintaining the Bacillus Genetic Stock Center as the central repository and distributor for Bacillus strains and more for years to come.