The End Game – Every Living Thing
February 25th, 2025 at 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM
Britton Smith Lecture Theatre, Room 132A in the School of Medicine Building
Dr. Paul Hebert, OC, FRSC
Professor and Canada Research Chair,
Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph
We share this planet with millions of multi-cellular species, the offspring of lineages which have survived and diversified for half a billion years. They now confront an unprecedented situation – a mass extinction event driven not by a physical cataclysm, but by a species. Humans have become the dominant agent of biotic change; extinction rates are now far higher than background levels. We are burning the books of life – without reading them. Until recently, life’s sheer diversity, the fact that millions of species await description, represented a serious barrier to action. However, advances in DNA sequencing and computation mean that the inventory of species will be complete within two decades. This achievement rests upon the discovery that sequence diversity in short, standardized gene regions, DNA barcodes, enables the automation of specimen identification and species discovery. By revolutionizing our ability to inventory biodiversity, DNA-based systems will enable a global biomonitoring system that tracks our impacts on life in near real time. Its activation will advance our ability to rescue threatened species while also ensuring that DNA extracts are retained from those that slip into extinction. But what’s the end game? Will we opt for resignation or will bioliteracy provoke humanity to change its ways – to take up new practices so we can live in harmony with nature? The End Game – it’s in our hands.
