Explanation of the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing and its implication for microbiology

Microbiology research has increasingly been operating against a background of laws and regulations that impact on the collection of new material from the wild, the research that is carried out on it and the ways in which the results of that research are shared with the originating country. These laws and regulations come under the heading of ‘Access and Benefit Sharing’ (ABS), and they have recently been brought into sharp relief by the coming into force of a new international regime, the Nagoya Protocol. The article below is intended to provide clarity on how microbiology is affected and on how research and collections should react.