Italy, Class CNBC TV, 11.06.10 h. 23.19, A Life for Science, Pietro Leo’s interview on molecular biology and food traceability under the Smarter Planet strategy

Mr Pietro Leo, Executive IT Architect, has been interviewed on molecular biology and food traceability during the weekly scientific TV program conducted by Alessandro Cecchi Paone. At the IBM Molecular Biodiversity Laboratory, researchers are conducting studies on biodiversity on food and environment: in fact, thanks to biodiversity around us it is possible to improve production or traceability processes:  on June 11th ago we celebrated the “Earth Day” and few days ago Internet reached the 1 billionth user connected. If we should consider all sensors and devices, all this huge quantity of devices connected, this is the whole Internet. Well, if we think of biodiversity as the aggregation of all species from the smallest to the biggest – let’s say us, the homo sapiens, it could be considered the “Internet of Life”, and we could be able to solve problems like traceability.

There is a very interesting aspect of this ‘Internet of Life’, we could also call it “Molecular Biodoversity”, referring to all those small differences existing inside us in terms of DNA or proteins: we are made of small networks and we live with beings in our bodies that help us – i.e. the intestinal flora. Biology and informatics, or Bioinformatics, have set up a DNA barcoding: this helps us identifying the origin of a certain species. In particular, this helps us with food traceability. 

See here the interview