pictureEven in the warm summer sunshine, the stagnant pools and rugged rock faces of Ribblehead Quarry in North Yorkshire feel like an unlikely frontier for the AI industrial revolution. Standing next to a waterfall gushing from broken rock, Bupe Mwambingu reaches his hand into the green mud behind the falls and emerges with a handful of algae.
Balancing precariously on the rock, the researcher passes the dripping glob to his colleague Emma Bolton, who uses a mobile app to record GPS coordinates as well as acidity, temperature, and light exposure.
“Be careful,” Bolton told Mwambing, who stumbled over the edge of the waterfall, and the two moved on to another part of the former limestone quarry in search of more dirt and debris.
The pair work for London-based startup Basecamp Research and are collecting genetic information. This is information from the organisms hiding in the nooks and crannies of rocks. In the past, scientists hoping to develop new products from rare lichens, microbes, or fungi had to travel to their habitats to collect samples. Now, most of the genetic code from these organisms is exchanged digitally through genetic signatures called digital sequence information (DSI).
Samples are collected carefully to avoid contamination. Photo: Rebecca Cole/The Guardian
The back-and-forth is at the heart of an international battle over who owns the world’s genetic data and who should benefit from the multi-billion-dollar discoveries that could result from it. In October, world leaders met to discuss the issue. Cali, Colombia attends COP16The World Biodiversity Summit was held to reach a first-of-its-kind global agreement on the issue.
Low-income countries, where much of the world’s remaining biodiversity remains, are hoping to pump billions of dollars into protecting the rainforests, lakes, and oceans where it resides.
Source: www.theguardian.com
