Information is the best bioasset, 'Owning Nature' conference goers agree

By Roger Segelken

Among all the bioprospecting, biotechnology and biobusiness, the most valuable bioasset -- participants in a two-day conference last week at Cornell agreed -- is information. And one of the greatest obstacles to resolving who owns biological information and who should benefit, some said, is misinformation.

More than two dozen speakers and discussants participated in the April 1 and 2 conference in Warren Hall, "Owning Nature: Biotechnology, Biodiversity and Bioassets," sponsored by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies; Cornell Research Foundation; Cornell Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development; Center for the Environment; and Office of the University Provost.

They discussed bioprospecting -- the scientific search for chemical and genetic information in nature -- in places as distant as Sri Lanka and Kenya and as near as Yellowstone National Park and West Danby, N.Y.

"Always, the benefits (from commercializing nature's formulas) must flow back to the place of collection -- not to the Pentagon or the Department of the Interior," said Preston Scott, director of the World Foundation for Environment and Development. Scott told how profits from products based on thermophilic bacteria in Yellowstone's geysers will support conservation of public lands in national parks.

Almost everyone had a story to tell about the value of biological information or the confusion caused by misinformation:

• "You're never going to get enough material for medicine from a very rare spider," said Cornell Goldwin Smith Professor of Chemistry Jerrold Meinwald, explaining why the bioprospecting process can't stop when a natural source is discovered. Bioprospectors must continue on, to determine the natural chemicals' molecular structure and make synthetic versions, he said.

• "HERBAL SUCKERS" was the huge headline in a Sri Lankan newspaper after Cornell chemist Athula Attygalle lectured there recently and tried to explain that ethical bioprospectors seek to export biological information -- not tons of biological materials. "It is becoming very difficult to conduct research when there is technology transfer and real benefits," Attygalle said.

• "There has been an underappreciation of the chemical diversity in desert plants; they have developed a plethora of very interesting chemicals," said Boyce Thompson Institute President Charles Arntzen, after other speakers described the chemical diversity of rain forest regions. The plant scientist told of a promising anti-cancer chemical that he and his medical collaborators found in an acacia tree that grows in arid Australia, adding that the potential chemotherapy agent also appears to lower cholesterol levels.

• "That's when we switched to the term 'bioprospecting,'" recalled Gay Nicholson, executive director of the Finger Lakes Land Trust. She said the conservation organization at first had used "chemical prospecting" to describe proposed activities of Cornell scientists in the newly designated West Danby biodiversity preserve. "That started a rumor that Cornell was spreading chemicals that would cause birth defects in Danby babies," she noted. In fact, Cornell scientists are conducting inventories of fungal diversity at the preserve, in cooperation with a pharmaceutical company

• "As a professor in the business school I say, don't rely on businesses. Corporations are not in the business of giving away information," said Alan K. McAdams, associate professor in the Johnson Graduate School of Management. A more dependable source of information for developing new medicines from nature, McAdams said, is university-based research.

• Forget what Dustin Hoffman's cinematic father said about plastics in "The Graduate." "The future is botanicals," said Eloy Rodriguez, the James Perkins Professor of Environmental Studies. Rodriguez sends undergraduate student-researchers to Africa, South and Central America in the search for plant-based medicines.

• "Bioprospecting was born here, at Cornell," said Ana Sittenfield, a scientist at the University of Costa Rica's Center for Research in Cellular and Molecular Biology. She cited Cornell chemists Jon Clardy and Jerrold Meinwald and biologist Thomas Eisner as leaders in the bioprospecting movement.

Eisner, the Schurman Professor of Chemical Ecology, was the keynote speaker the first day of the conference. He described numerous examples of potentially useful chemical compounds that were discovered in insects, plants and microorganisms by what he called biorational exploration. Computer modeling could never "invent" a plant-based drug like Taxol -- only nature can, Eisner said, and those natural discoveries must be made by inquisitive humans.

"I worry that exploring nature is an art that is no longer taught. Don't just give your children computers," Eisner implored. "Give them hand lenses and microscopes."