Genetic gold rush The hunt for data from nature - and a fight over profits

Even in the warm summer sun, the stagnant puddles and harsh rock faces of Ribblehead quarry in North Yorkshire feel like an unlikely frontier of the AI industrial revolution.

- Patrick Greenfield

Standing next to a waterfall that bursts out from the fractured rock, Bupe Mwambingu reaches into the green sludge behind the cascade and emerges with fistful of algae.

Balancing precariously on the rocks, the researcher passes the dripping mass to her colleague Emma Bolton, who notes their GPS coordinates and the acidity, temperature and light exposure on a phone app.

"Be careful," Bolton says to Mwambingu as she wobbles at the edge of the waterfall, and they move on to another part of the former limestone quarry, in search of more grime and gunk.

The pair, who work for the London-based startup Basecamp Research, are harvesting genetic information from organisms lurking in the nooks and crannies of the rocks. Once, scientists seeking to develop new products using a rare lichen, microbe or fungus might have had to visit its habitat and gather a sample. Now, the genetic codes derived from these organisms is almost always exchanged digitally, through genetic signatures known as digital sequencing information (DSI).

This exchange is now at the heart of an international battle over who owns the natural world's genetic data - and who should benefit from the multibillion-dollar discoveries derived from it. In October, world leaders will meet in Cali in Colombia at Cop16, the global biodiversity summit, to try to finalise a world-first agreement on this issue.

Low-income countries - where much of the world's biodiversity remains - hope it could funnel billions into conserving the rainforests, lakes and oceans where such organisms live.