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Learning (And Harvesting) from Extremophiles
kudyadi writes "BBC News has an article on the threat posed to extremophiles by anxious prospectors ready to exploit their unique nature. Potential discoveries include glycoprotein, which prevents Antarctic fish from freezing, and an extract from green algae for use in cosmetic skin treatment, and anti-tumour properties in a strain of yeast. This article explains the issue more lucidly, but in the end, one must consider the environmental ramifications of this biological exploitation before moving ahead full scale. So how is Tux in danger? Let me remind you of a thing called the food chain and then read this."
I had to read the article before figuring out that extremophiles were not folks who enjoy things like base jumping on Mars, "water"skiing on the freeway, real-life Crazy Taxi, nude Antarctic beaches, etc. etc.
Is some great white hunter scientist with a cotton swab and a sequencer really going to be a threat to Antarctica?
Is that one of those Audiophiles that buys all the best equipment and scoffs at CD audio in favor of DVD audio?
Let's just stop ALL science until we're absolutely sure of every ramification of every single thing we do. It's a good thing these people weren't in charge in cavemen times; the first man to create fire would have been stoned to death for creating smoke, and the first one to create the wheel would have been burned at the stake for making something that could roll over grass.
...and tend to congregate at Slashdot...
Sorry, had to be said...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Invitrogen patented the harvesting of the polymerase enzyme from the extremophile bacteria thermophiles aquarticus. It's a shame that one company can overcharge researchers by patenting something nature created!
One of the biggest arguments of the folks who promote biodiversity is that we may find organisms that produce pharmaceuticals that we can use to do important things. That way biodiversity seems more commercially appealing (I'm not saying it is or isn't true, I'm just restating the argument.)
So now we've got folks complaining because we're trying to exploit some of the organisms to produce pharmaceuticals. The priniciples of biodiversity are playing out as the advocates expected, and now a faction of those advocates are crying foul because somebody's actually exploiting the organisms for commercial gain.
If you're going to use the biodiversity for exploitation argument, you can't complain when someone actually starts exploiting.
This is the sort of story that illustrates the risk inherent in a proprietary approach to knowledge. The first duty of a proprietary interest is to secure a financial return on investment. There's a built-in incentive to discount other competing interests, like stifling innovative software or, as in this case, damaging the environment.
I'm laughing at clouds.
And "bio-prospecting" is such a loaded term. "Prospector" evokes images of an old, grizzled prospector wearing filthy clothes, leading an overburdened pack mule and "lookin' fer gold in them thar hills." We don't label physicists "particle-prospectors", after all.
Extremophiles are organisms that live at the edge of the range of environments life can exist in. Essentially very hot (at boiling water temperatures), to extreme cold temperature (cell contents should be freezing but they don't), to high acidity, alkalinity, or high salt. concentrations.
They are a literal gold mine for biotech companies. Heat extremophiles are a great source of heat stable enzymes that work in almost boiling water. This makes them good for many industrial processes and also makes them easy to make and purify in a none extremophile organism (you grow it up in the bacteria, smash open the cells and cook the contents till the only thing left active is the heat stable protein).
Cold tolerant organisms have great antifreeze techniques, as well as a source of enzymes that are able to work efficiently at cold temperatures. Handy for many industrial processes and even as additives in such mundane things as laundry detergent that is designed for use in cold water. The anitfreeze may have applications in crygenic applications (more pratically for freezing tissue samples and organs rather than a whole human).
The problem with cold extremophiles is the biggest source exist in Antartica, and people are sensitive about what happens in that region of the world. The point I should make is that this research will only require sampling and identification and growth in the lab of these organisms, and is really a pratical outgrowth of the scientific research already carried out in Antartica. These organisms are not going to be "harvested" in Antartica for any commercial purpose, and I can't see further research in this area creating anymore disturbance to the ecosystem than the research already carried out in Antartica since the first explorers. If anything this increases the need to preserve the ecosystem, along the same lines as the saving rainforest for the potential undiscovered medicinal plants.
I was going to put a sig here, but I had already submitted the message.
If I remember corrently, the original patent for the use of thermostable Thermophilus aquaticus DNA polymerase belongs to Roche. Before I posted this comment, I checked in espacenet for any patents by Invitrogen regarding "thermostable" or "thermophilus" or "aquaticus". I couldn't find any hits.
You are right, however, there are a number of patents regarding Taq polymerase, but they actually patent a method using this enzyme, or a laboratory-made mutation of this enzyme, mostly with the goal of improving fidelity of DNA replication. That is in accordance with established copyright laws (afaik -- ianal), they didn't simply patent something they found, but a method that uses it.
If you are a researcher at a non-commercial institution, you are if I'm correctly informed, exempt from certain patent laws, and I heard of people who have their own expression vectors for Taq polymerase, and use it to produce polymerase for their lab's use.
Also, no biotech company would go to the point of "harvesting" the polymerase from Thermophilus aquaticus, when you can have your friendly E.coli make the same protein in a much easier way.