MTA Glossar

This list has been created by the CETAF group.

• ACCESS: Acquisition of GENETIC RESOURCES with permission as granted by the country that has sovereign right over those resources (PROVIDING COUNTRY), or other relevant entity. Note that this term has not been defined in the Convention on Biological Diversity or the Nagoya Protocol, and may be used differently by some countries or organizations. An agreed definition should be included in all legal documents. The EU Regulation defines ACCESS as ‘the acquisition of GENETIC RESOURCES or of traditional knowledge associated with GENETIC RESOURCES in a Party to the Nagoya Protocol’.
• AGREEMENT: this MTA document.
• BIODIVERSITY BIOBANK: A facility for preservation and storage of typically non-human, GENETIC RESOURCES and associated DATA, which follows standard operating procedures and supplies material for scientific USE. Examples include culture collections, DNA banks and tissue collections.
• COLLECTION: A group of SPECIMENs or SAMPLEs that are managed for the purpose of preservation and study. They are generally associated through sharing some feature, e.g. being of the same taxon (e.g. mammals, insects, sharks), from the same general locality or ecosystem, or collected by the same collector or on the same expedition. COLLECTIONs are maintained by COLLECTION-holding institutions, for example natural history museums, herbaria, botanical gardens, seed banks or BIODIVERSITY BIOBANKs.
• COMMERCIALISATION,COMMERCIALISE, COMMERCIAL PURPOSES: Applying for, obtaining or transferring intellectual property rights or other tangible or intangible rights by sale or license or in any other manner, commencement of product development, conducting market assessments, and seeking pre-market approval and/or the sale of any resulting product based on UTILISATION of the original GENETIC RESOURCE or screening of compound libraries. Also the sale, lease, or license of MATERIAL, PROGENY, or DERIVATIVES; or USEs of MATERIAL, * PROGENY, or DERIVATIVES by any organization, including the RECIPIENT, to screen compound libraries in order to produce or manufacture products for general sale. Handling fees (e.g. for providing DNA samples), analytical cost recovery, entrance charges etc., fall under the scope of management and/or administration of public facilities, do not involve the UTILISATION of GENETIC RESOURCES, and are not considered as a commercialization of RESEARCH activity on GENETIC RESOURCES.
• DATA: Any information associated with a specimen and/or collection which are provided to the RECIPIENT by the SUPPLIER, including but not limited to: provenance information, biological information, taxonomic information, chain of custody information, and images.
• DERIVATIVE: Means a naturally occurring biochemical compound resulting from the genetic expression or metabolism of biological or GENETIC RESOURCES, even if it does not contain functional units of heredity (definition from Nagoya Protocol Art 2).
• EU REGULATION – Where used in this document, this refers to Regulation (EU) No 511/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 April 2014 on compliance measures for users from the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilisation in the Union, which entered into force for Europe on 6 Jun 2014. CETAF
• GDPR-General Data Protection Regulation: the EU regulation (EU) 2016/679 enforced on 25 May 2018 to harmonize data privacy laws across Europe, and protect citizens from privacy and data breaches across Europe.
• GENETIC MATERIAL: Any material of plant, animal, microbial or other origin containing functional units of heredity (definition from Article 2 of the Convention on Biological Diversity).
• GENETIC RESOURCES: GENETIC MATERIAL of actual or potential value (definition from Article 2 of the Convention on Biological Diversity).
• GLOBAL GENOME BIODIVERSITY NETWORK (GGBN): A global network of well-managed COLLECTIONs of genomic tissue samples from across the Tree of Life, benefiting society through biodiversity RESEARCH, and long-term conservation of the archived materials. This network will foster collaborations among BIODIVERSITY BIOBANKS in order to ensure quality standards, improve best practices, secure interoperability, and harmonize transfer of GENETIC RESOURCES, of material in accordance with national laws and best practices.
• MATERIAL: Refers to the items listed on the reverse of this AGREEMENT.
• MATERIAL TRANSFER AGREEMENT (MTA): An agreement between two institutions stipulating the terms and conditions for transferring SPECIMENs or samples, including GENETIC MATERIAL.
• METADATA: Any data associated with the MATERIAL that describes the origin or identifies the original provenience of the MATERIAL.
• MODIFICATIONS: Substances created by the RECIPIENT by using the MATERIAL which are not the ORIGINAL MATERIAL, PROGENY, or UNMODIFIED DERIVATIVES and which have new properties. MODIFICATIONS include, but are not limited to, recombinant DNA clones.
• MUTUALLY AGREED TERMS (MAT): An agreement reached between the PROVIDING COUNTRY of GENETIC RESOURCES and users on the conditions of ACCESS and USE and the benefits to be shared between both parties.
• ORIGINAL MATERIAL: That which was originally supplied to the SUPPLIER by the depositor.
• OWNERSHIP: Property of a person or institution including all legal rights associated with that property; in some countries also indicated by Transfer of Title or similar documents confirming legal transfer.
• PRIOR INFORMED CONSENT (PIC): The permission given by the Competent National Authority of a PROVIDING COUNTRY to a user prior to accessing GENETIC RESOURCES, in line with an appropriate national legal and institutional framework, i.e. what a user can and cannot do with the material.
• PROGENY: Unmodified descendant (e.g. subculture or replicate) from the MATERIAL.
• PROVIDING COUNTRY / PROVIDER OF MATERIAL: (or "Country providing GENETIC RESOURCES") Means the country supplying GENETIC RESOURCES collected from in-situ sources, including populations of both wild and domesticated species, or taken from ex-situ sources, which may or may not have originated in that country (Definition from CBD Art 2).
• PUBLIC DOMAIN USE: means scientific research that aims at making analytic results and knowledge publicly available at no more than incremental costs for dissemination, and without protecting or aiming to protect such results under patent, intellectual property or similar rights.
• RECIPIENT: The organization to whom the SUPPLIER sends the MATERIAL.
• RESEARCH: The systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions. This does not include any development of commercial or non-commercial applications.
• RESPONSIBLE PROJECT LEADER: This is the person that has the obligation to carry out due diligence and any reporting on the UTILISATION including under the EU regulation.
• SAMPLE: See also SPECIMEN.
• SPECIMEN: This includes any type of biological material. The term “SPECIMEN” is usually synonymous with “material” or “samples” or “subsamples” in this context. The concept can include associated SPECIMENs or materials such as but not limited to parasites and gut content.
• SUPPLIER: The party supplying the MATERIAL.
• TRANSFER: To convey MATERIAL temporarily or permanently from one person or institution to another.
• UNMODIFIED DERIVATIVES: Replicates or substances which constitute an unmodified functional subunit or product expressed by the MATERIAL, such as, but not limited to, purified or fractionated subsets of the MATERIAL, including expressed proteins or extracted or amplified DNA/RNA.
• USE: The purposes to which samples and SPECIMENs (biological and genetic material) are put, including but not limited to ‘UTILISATION’ in the sense of the Nagoya Protocol.
• USER: Person or institution that uses or mandates uses of samples, specimens and MATERIAL including but not limited to ‘UTILISATION’ in the sense of the Nagoya Protocol.
• UTILISATION (OF GENETIC RESOURCES): To conduct RESEARCH and development on the genetic and/or biochemical composition of GENETIC RESOURCES, including through the application of biotechnology as defined in Article 2 of the Convention (definition from the Nagoya Protocol).