What the heck are these? The documents for this crate say the contents are Polypodium ferns. Those are perfectly legal to import, but all the leaves have been hacked off these plants. I can’t identify them from the stems alone. Jim, can you get a reading on them?”

“Sure–just a second…. Well according to my Global Flora Scanner, they’re actually Stangeria eriopus, the Natal grass cycad, which looks a lot like a fern. It’s an endangered species from Mozambique–says here they’re just about extinct in the wild. They’re illegal to import, but collectors are just crazy about them. Apparently some cycads sell for as much as $20,000 on the black market. I’ve never intercepted Stangerias here at the airport before. Good thing you spotted them–and that they were in the GFS database. We’d better investigate; this should mean a big fine or even an arrest for the importer.”The dialogue might sound like science fiction, but that kind of scenario could transpire sooner than you think. One of the great biological projects of our time will be to collect DNA sequences from every living species on Earth. The objective is to create a universal genetic database of life. Once it is mostly complete–perhaps a decade from now–the project will enable any plant, animal, fungus, or other organism to be identified simply by sampling its DNA and comparing that with the database of known DNA sequences.