GENE BANKING

My friend Mike Dorsey called my attention to this piece on DNA BANKING.

Here is his commentary:

Although we all knew it, its now official: Bioprospecting is Now about DNA Banking.

Hence the comment that: "...DNA extraction at the Missouri Botanical Garden is a new project that is under development..."

The next sentence, following the one above notes:

"The database that contains information for processed and curated samples has been dramatically changed. "

Although the exact details of the changes are not known, one should ask: Why any changes in an age old practice of collecting and storing plant germplasm?

This is the beginning and official announcement of a futures market in biology--specifically in DNA.

It does not pay now, so its being banked as the foundational capital in a kind of proto-forward market in biocommercial products and certainly, sooner than later: services. This is unlike past banking, since the market potential was poorly understood. But now the reality of the NBIC (nano- bio-info-cognitive) convergence means that further banking strikes the onset of new markets, as DNA and its substrates become sites of production.

Noel Castree has already implied the import of this kind of banking, bio-futures-market in his work on InBio. The implicit question there seems to be (and he more or less answers it): if they have not had a big hit what the hell are they still doing in operation?

Shaman Pharmaceutical's re-emergence gives credence to this outlook.

Further, how far apart is the recent call for off-set markets in biodiversity (given by an ex-Kew Garden's staffer turn I-Banker, at IUCN's Bangkok shin-dig a forthnight ago) and futures market in DNA. Wasn't the hedge market just a convenient corridor/tool to deal with certain classes of transactions in offsets and futures markets a short time ago?

DNA-as the means of production...hmmm.....What this means for "revolutionary worker talk" or "get your street protest on" is a story
yet to be told.

Bruce Sterling and friend give us a hint when thinking about "junk-DNA" (a la junk-Bond): http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0301/Junk.shtml