"Before today you did not have an international set of ground rules on how to share the benefits of new pharmaceuticals, new crops, new products derived from the genetic treasure trove of the developing world," said Nick Nuttall, the spokesman for the United Nations Environment Program.
This genetic treasure trove will allow researchers "to get to the parasite at every possible level," says Fotis Kafatos, director of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg.
The face value for eons of evolutionary history is only about $10, though the limited 1,000 unit release may drive the price up to something more worthy of its genetic treasure trove.
But if current deforestation rates continue, the rain forests and their diverse genetic treasure trove will be long gone before we have had a chance to fully understand their potential.
This would potentially enable scientists to exploit the 'untapped genetic treasure trove' that is currently in thousands of herbaria worldwide.
The mPing-SCAR markers may also be valuable in uncovering genetic 'treasures' that remain hidden in the results of classical genetic studies pursued in Japan until 1990s.
Otherwise, cells quite reasonably hold onto their nuclei with their treasures of genetic information.
He compared the genetic code to a treasure map, saying the Xs were starting to appear, and that the promise of the field was "immense".
Crop genetic resources harbour a treasure of undiscovered allelic variants and thus provide an opportunity for genetic improvement of cultivated species.
The decoding of the rice genome is expected to unlock the treasure trove of genetic information in the world's seed banks because with markers for any gene of interest breeders now can quickly search for a better version of any rice gene or for the counterpart genes in other crops.
Inside the Ethiopian Institute of Biodiversity's unassuming office complex in Addis Ababa, a series of vaults houses tens of thousands of seed samples tightly sealed into small envelopes and neatly catalogued in cold storage – a treasure trove of genetic diversity painstakingly assembled and set aside for future generations.
