Genetic resources in the age of the Nagoya Protocol and gene/genome synthesis

Exploring emerging questions and discussions around the practice of synthesizing DNA in the context of global biological diversity use and regulation.

The Idea

This workshop was dedicated to exploring emerging questions and discussions around the practice of synthesizing DNA in the context of global biological diversity use and regulation. From the scientific community, our participants included many synthetic biologists; thanks to their commitment to projects that explicitly depend on considerable quantities of synthesized DNA, synthetic biologists were already invested in these conversations and were well placed to inform us of practices currently undergoing change. As synthesized DNA is made and used widely throughout the biological sciences, much of what is reported here has significance well beyond synthetic biology. In addition to scientists working with synthesized DNA, we brought in participants from across the range of institutions, organisations, and disciplines that have been engaged with the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and discussions around access and benefit-sharing (ABS) for decades. Participants included representatives of natural history museums, international biological collections, bioinformatics institutes, and scholars from law, geography, history, and the social sciences.