To conduct more research on developing new food sources and medical remedies, Iranian scientists are working on bio-resources focusing on the ones on the brink of extinction.
This was told to Mehr News Agency by Seyyed Abol-Hassan Shahzadeh-Fazeli, Director of Iran's National Center of Genetic and Biological Reservoirs adding that the biodiversity of Iran is one of the incentives of the program.
Shahzadeh-Fazeli also recounted that Iran’s biobank is composed of four departments devoted to plants, micro-organisms, human and animals, and molecules.
In a new bid to restore Iran’s biodiversity Shahzadeh-Fazeli broke the news of a new contract signed between Iran's National Center of Genetic and Biological Reservoirs and Academic Center for Education, Culture and Research (ACECR) of Yazd Province of Iran to open a new biobank specialized on Persian horses.
The new joint bank aims at sampling and restoring the verity of original species adapted to Iran’s different weather conditions, Shahzadeh-Fazeli added.
Gene banks are a type of biorepository which preserve genetic material. For plants, this could be by freezing cuttings from the plant, or stocking the seeds (e.g. in a seedbank). For animals, this is the freezing of sperm and eggs in zoological freezers until further need. With corals, fragments are taken which are stored in water tanks under controlled conditions.
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