Unicell - Terms and conditions

Access and use

Any request to use the UNICELL facility will be done through a “user request form” and validated by the platform managers. Some platform equipment might be used autonomously after prior training provided by the UNICELL coordinators after completing and signing the written request. The user's team or lab leader must comply by signing this form.

Depending on users’ needs and upon joint discussion, UNICELL may propose a service of a collaboration.

Scientific collaborations

Scientific collaborations represent mutually agreed research partnerships between users and the UNICELL facility. These include, but are not limited to, the development of new protocols, and generating and interpreting data. Collaborative projects are discussed in advance with UNICELL members; they can lead to co-authorship in resulting publications.

Samples

Users must declare whether their samples involve biological, chemical or radioactive risks. UNICELL can treat samples of the following categories:

• Environmental samples (e.g. freshwater, sea water, sediment, etc.) non-radioactive or very little radioactive (e.g. values higher than those indicated by IRSN for French territory).

• Cultures of non-pathogenic microorganisms (prokaryotes and eukaryotes).

• GMOs: class 2 confinement.

The platform engineer reserves the right to refuse any sample that does not comply with the security conditions mentioned above.

Resulting data

UNICELL will provide a report of the results as a PDF file to users. The data generated in each project will be kept for a limited period of time (typically 3 months), depending on the storage capacities available in the platform. Users will be informed about when their data will be erased.

Equipment maintenance

The platform engineer is in charge of the maintenance and proper functioning of the platform equipment.

Acknowledgements

All scientific publications and presentations resulting from UNICELL-generated data must mention the facility in the acknowledgments section, as follows: “The present work has benefited from the UNICELL single-cell genomics facility (https://www.deemteam.fr/en/unicell)". Users will inform the platform of any publication and make available a pdf copy to UNICELL.