Biodiversity preservation has become a major challenge of the XXIst century. Biodiversity identification and monitoring are the cornerstones for preservation actions. However, the classical conservation and taxonomy approaches no longer fit with the emergency of the situation. In response to these great upheavals and the opportunities given by the latest biotechnology advances conservationists have enlarged their toolbox. The use of DNA has deeply impacted taxonomy over the last decade, evolving from a species detection method to a tool for the identification and discovery of new species. However, the full exploitation of genomic technologies requires high sequencing costs and expensively equipped facilities only available in developed countries. Furthermore, exportation of biological samples between countries has been largely restricted by the NAGOYA protocol in order to protect the access to genetic resources and the sharing of their benefits. This creates an impasse for conservation efforts and scientific research, since both directly work with biological samples to study or reference them. The need for on-site genomic tools has become urgent !

In this way, to fill the gap between new genomic conservation approaches and DNA sequencing technologies, we are developing a miniaturized tool to automatically process botanical samples into the field and accelerate biodiversity identification.

GenoRobotics

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