Lorenzo Segovia, an investigator at the Institute of Biotechnology of the Autonomous National University of Mexico (IBT, UNAM) in Cuernavaca, recently visited the laboratories of Diversa, a San Diego, CA, biotechnology company specializing in recombinant approaches for accessing molecular diversity, to discuss using novel theoretical tools he has been developing to assist in rationally evolving enzymatic activities in vitro. After his seminar, the talk turned, naturally enough, to the subject of exotic cDNA libraries, and Lorenzo remembered that when he had been a postdoctoral fellow at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH; Bethesda, MD) working on the molecular biology of crystallins, he had a library of kangaroo eye cDNA made by Stratagene. At that moment, Marjory Snead, now Diversa's recombinant DNA librarian, introduced herself as the person who'd made it.
I tell this story, not so much as another example of the "small world of biotechnology," but rather to call attention to a relationship that breaks all the negative stereotypes associated with biodiversity prospecting ventures between the North and South, and is, I believe, an encouraging harbinger for their future. Unlike other collaborations, in which access to protected habitats has been granted to a pharmaceutical or biotechnology company interested in exploiting biodiversity (including Diversa's landmark agreement with the US government to bioprospect in Yellowstone National Park), the driving force behind the Diversa–IBT relationship was an interest on the part of scientists from both places in the structure and evolution of enzymes that function in extreme environments, and not in the commercialization of genetic resources.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
