The Natural Science Collections (NSC) Alliance has endorsed the America’s Living Library Act, a bipartisan bill sponsored by Senators Alex Padilla (D-CA) and Todd Young (R-IN) and Representatives Stephanie Bice (R-OK) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) that recognizes biological data and physical specimens as strategic national resources.
The bill establishes the America’s Living Library Project, an initiative to collect, catalog, and sequence genomic information from animals, plants, fungi, and microbes across the National Park System. For the natural science collections community, this bill represents a commitment to the preservation and utilization of physical biological samples.
The legislation stems from a recommendation by the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB), on which the bill’s lead sponsors serve as Commissioners. The NSCEB identified that while the U.S. National Park System covers 85 million acres of diverse climates and biodiversity, the nation has yet to fully leverage this wealth of biological data for innovation and national security.
NSC Alliance joins a broad coalition of supporters, including the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), ConservAmerica, Ginkgo Bioworks, the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), and the American Institute of Biological Sciences. The legislation is also cosponsored by Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR), Chris Coons (D-DE), Steve Daines (R-MT), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), and Tim Sheehy (R-MT).