In an underground facility below Abu Dhabi’s science and technology district, workers in lab coats run samples through centrifuge machines, slot vials into industrial-sized freezers and tend to rows of photocopier-like genetic sequencing machines.

Those 55 sequencing devices, each one worth tens of thousands of dollars, represent the highest concentration of such equipment outside the US, their owners say. And they signal the oil-rich emirate’s investment in a powerful, and potentially highly profitable, new resource: its citizens’ DNA.

Abu Dhabi’s biggest healthcare company M42, chaired by powerful Abu Dhabi royal and United Arab Emirates national security adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan, says it has sequenced 802,000 genomes, including from 702,000 Emiratis. At just under three-quarters of the local population, that makes it one of the most comprehensive genetic population data sets in the world.