New UNBC biobank could reshape research across the continent

“Any professor, any researcher from university, from government, from Indigenous communities who want access to these samples can just apply and explain what project they want to do, and then we will share those samples with them,” Gorrell continued.

Cartwright says this is the first biobank of this nature in Canada, and one of only two or three across the entire continent. He, alongside Gorrell, say this will revolutionize the speed at which researchers can access samples, greatly improving research efficiency.

“I would receive 20 to 30 requests a year for samples from PhD students, from government biologists, master’s students, and it would always take me one, two, three years to get the samples for them. Longer than the time they had to do the project,” Cartwright said.

“What would normally take tens of thousands of dollars to do research, we should be able to shave that down to hundreds of dollars, and shave off years on the time that it’ll take to do those projects,” Cartwright continued.

Gorrell says the information gleaned from these samples is crucial to all sorts of wildlife research, including but not limited to:

DNA analysis to look at how animals move across a landscape.
Analyze diet habits and nutrients in plant life. “We can look at the amount of carbon and nitrogen and determine what they’ve been eating,” Gorrell explained.
Research on viruses, bacteria, parasites.
Hormone research. “We can look at hormones: are the animals more stressed? Do they have high cortisol for example? And how does that come back to their environment?” Gorrell said.
Toxins and other contaminants in the environment.

“It’s especially important to get these samples before something happens. So if there’s a mine spill, for example, we have samples from that region before the disaster happened, and then we can compare to after,” Gorrell said.

by Tommy Osborne

New UNBC biobank could reshape research across the continent

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