Myth-busting the provider-user relationship for digital sequence information

  1. Amber Hartman Scholz
  2. Matthias Lange
  3. Pia Habekost
  4. Paul Oldham
  5. Ibon Cancio
  6. Guy Cochrane
  7. Jens Freitag

Reviewed by

Read the full article

Listed in

Log in to save this article

Abstract

Background

The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) formally recognized the sovereign rights of nations over their biological diversity. Implicit within the treaty is the idea that mega-biodiverse countries will provide genetic resources and grant access to them and scientists in high-income countries will use these resources and share back benefits. However, little research has been conducted on how this framework is reflected in real-life scientific practice.

Result

Currently, parties to the CBD are debating whether digital sequence information (DSI) should be regulated under a new benefit-sharing framework. At this critical time point in the upcoming international negotiations, we test the fundamental hypothesis of provision and use of DSI by looking at the global patterns of access and use in scientific publications.

Conclusion

Our data reject the provider-user relationship and suggest a far more complex information flow for DSI. Therefore, any new policy decisions on DSI should be aware of the high level of use of DSI across low- and middle-income countries and seek to preserve open access to this crucial common good.

Article activity feed

  1. GigaScience

    Nations Convention

    **Reviewer 2. Michael Fire. ** The paper is interesting and easy to follow, and the interactive charts are useful and make it easy to interact with the data. Moreover, the implications and contributions of the study are clear. However, the paper needs to be carefully be edit and proofread in order to make it ready for publication.

    Minor Issues:

    • The paper needs to be carefully proofread and edited
    • The layout of Figure 1 isn't good. I recommend using subplots with subtitles. Remove of countries with very low percentage. In addition, the caption of this figure needs to be improved.
    • Figure 2. Beside the countries colored with pink. It is hard to distinguish between the values of different countries. Although this figure emphasis that the ratio is mostly even, I personally think, it would be better to use different color scheme, or normalize the values, so the difference among countries will more noticeable.
    • The paper's layout has unused free space in pages 5 and 6.
    • The quality of figures throughout the paper need to be improved. Typos (some examples):
    • Abstract: CBD) -> CBD,
    • P. 2: "for user checks [4]. (Countires"
    • P. 3: originated. (Note
    • P. 3: "use" -> "use."
    • Figure 2: graph 3.4 -> Graph 3.4 (why call this Graph?)
    • P. 8 "DSI (/country "
    • P. 8: figure 3 -> Figure 3
    • Figure captions are with different formats.
    • Figure 4 caption is in a mislocated
    • P. 12: Figure 2 and 5 -> Figures 2 and 5
  2. GigaScience

    The United

    Reviewer 1. Takeru Nakazato

    The authors extract country names from gene sequence data in "traditional" ENA database and compare them with the country names of submitters to provide data-driven proof of the myth about the relationship between providers-users relationships for digital sequence information. I also implicitly believe in that myth. This verification has important implications for future handling of DSI. There is much room for debate in this manuscript, but I think it is important to ask the world as soon as possible. I make some points about this manuscript.

    1. The Nagoya Protocol has prompted a major shift in the use of genetic resources. I think authors should also discuss the year of registration for digital sequence information. (Specifically, before and after the Nagoya Protocol) (It is desirable to provide actual data, but this time I will only seek the views of the author.)

    2. The authors focus only on ENA's "traditional" gene sequence information (data corresponding to NCBI's GenBank). Regarding digital sequence information, NGS is currently being actively used, and data is also being accumulated in SRA (sequence read archive) at a tremendous pace. In addition, recent MinION devices can acquire digital sequence information on the spot without taking genetic resources out of the country. The lack of this data is a flaw in this manuscript, but at least the authors can discuss it in the manuscript, I think.

    3. In recent years, there has been a movement called "museomics" that extracts DNA from museum specimens and obtains digital sequence information. Museomics contributes to Ancient DNA and Taxonomic clarification. ENA/GenBank/DDBJ also has a "specimen_voucher" field, which already has hundreds of thousands of digital sequence information with this data (https://doi.org/10.3897/biss.5.73787). Does this have any effect on this study? Should DSI from museum specimen be excluded from the statistical processing in this study? (Authors don't have to mention this in the manuscript)

  4. Version published to 10.1093/gigascience/giab085
  5. Version published to 10.1101/2021.08.02.454535v1 on bioRxiv