Celera Opens Up DNA Database

greenplato writes "Thirty billion base pairs from the sequences of humans, mice, and rats that were available only by subscription to Celera's DNA database are being put into the public domain. Celera will donate this information to a 'federally run database,' presumably GenBank. Francis Collins, head of the National Human Genome Research Institute, notes that 'data just wants to be public.' Stories in BusinessWeek and The New York Times."

Comments

Shouldn't that be

[Spetiam]

Shouldn't that be "data want to be free?" :)

Re:'Bout Time

[Seoulstriker]

That is so wrong on numerous levels. Hi Evil Corporation, here's ten thousand dollars so I can get a peek at genetic code that I inherently share with every human being in the first place.

Let's see, the one company that pioneered genome research with reliable and extremely efficient shotgun sequencing, is now an evil corporation because it wanted to use its investments in research for developing novel therapeutics. Which in the end benefits human-kind. Please...

I don't think it wants to be free.

[chriswaclawik]

Considering the millions of dollars that Celera invested in gene sequencing, it should at least have the opportunity to make back that money. Heaven forbid, they might even deserve to make a PROFIT. Profit is a leading motivation of many corporations, you know...

What about patents?

[Krankheit]

Hasn't much of the human genome been patented by greedy companies?

Re:What about patents?

[the gnat]

You can't generally patent "found" sequences.

I wish that were not the case. However, there are many gene patents in existence. The trick is that now you have to show a function for that gene - although bioinformatics is sophisticated (or rather, automated) enough that you can come up with a plausible-sounding function without ever doing benchwork.

What's really being patented is the medical application of these sequences. For instance, Company X discovers that gene Y is overexpressed in cancer Z. They take out a patent on gene Y based on this discovery. That means that no one else can pursue gene Y as a therapeutic target. Moreover, in one case testing for a specific mutation to detect cancer was covered by a patent. This is a very simple piece of labwork being covered, which any competent cancer researcher could have figured out.

The end result is that patents are being awarded for hard work, not for novelty and invention. Throw enough money at a subject, and you'll get data but not necessarily results. Since companies (or academics) can now patent just the data, if someone else gets "lucky" and comes up with an actual result the patent holders can sue the tar out of them if they try to make money off it. (Or even if they don't, as in the case of the breast cancer gene; the company wanted people to pay three times as much for its own testing kit.)

You may soon be able to patent single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which may be involved in differential drug responses. Back when I was in college we had a guest lecturer who was a biotech patent attorney, and he said he though SNPs should definitely be patentable. In any case, there is a world of difference between patenting a cancer drug, and patenting a gene (or a FUCKING POINT MUTATION) that may, in the future, be a drug target.

Since most of the human genome is noncoding, I suspect it will be harder to patent pieces of it. I also suspect that some asshole will try anyway.

Again?

[zappepcs]

FTA "DNA database are being put into the public domain" Again, we find information and data that SHOULD be in the public domain, yet the patent office, government, and kickbacks protect those that stand to make money? Its time that we, as a populace, stand and shout for the rights of the public to information. Sure, there are those that say that without protection, such innovation would be stiffled, and I counter with this... "should such efforts be in the public sector?" Through emminent domain, they can take your property, but if you are a business, there seems to be no such thing. I hear of companies giving to this charity or that... but none are giving to the charity of mankind? Information is power, and in this information age, it is time for those with the information to take power from those that would use it to extort finance and power from those that do not know better. All such information should be in the public domain. Knowledge of the human genome, of anything that affects ALL of us, should be public information. For instance, any method of retrieving emergency information during an emergency should be in the public domain, not a subject of patent worthiness. The entire point of 911 service is to aid the community, not bilk them of dollars. The entire point of scientific discovery is to learn and advance humankind... when it becomes simply a method of making money, the advancement of humankind goes in the trash like yesterdays junk mail. At that point, what is the point of funding science? Think bigger than your new BMW. This might seem altruistic, but what is the point of discovery if your only reason to share is profit? When do you lose respect, when do you stop having authority? The ONLY method of advancing the human race is through sharing, through communal discovery. Perhaps this will advance that purpose, perhaps it won't.

Re:Again?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Yes, yes, yes... But who is going to fund all this discovery? If it's "the public", than of course "the public" should be able to access it (although I don't think most of us could make much use of it), but if on the other hand it is some private concern that is doing the research, than they have every right to obtain value from their investment. That they are being put into the public domain is a great thing for Celera to do. If they want something out of it, I see no problem with that, I'm sure they spent a lot of $$$ to do the work.

Re:'Bout Time

[Oculus Habent]

Celera's "exremely efficient" method only worked because the NIH's freely available genome data was available. Without it Celera's "shotgun" fragments would have been just that - fragments. It took a base of comparison to complete the map.

Celera relied on the "free research" of the NIH. They extended that research with their own technique, and then patented the result of the joint data.

Well this is a bit embarrassing

[glwtta]

I supposedly do this crap for a living, and I find out about this from slashdot.

Anyway, Celera seems to epitomize the way large projects like this become free: they sink billions upon billions of dollars into a project which is soon supplanted by a better free (though, of course, government funded) alternative, and after years of unsuccessfully trying to sell it, release it for free for a bit of good PR.

But then again, they've made a huge contribution to the field overall; Craig Venter may be an arrogant prick, but he gets shit done, while Francis Collins mostly waxes poetic about the bright future of genomics.

Well, that seems like enough venting about the sad state of research.

Craig's sequence?

[Anonymous Coward]

Craig Venter better hope his health/life insurance company doesn't take a closer look at the sequence and drop him for "pre-existing" conditions.

In all seriousness however, Celera's sequences essentially suck anyway. The public projects have handily beat them and their sequencing methods have been deemed inferior (see last October's issue of Nature). They are not adding any scientific value by releasing their versions of these three genomes.

Re:'Bout Time

[Fnkmaster]

So, lemme get this straight: they fired the people in an unprofitable part of their business and expanded into profitable endeavours. God, that sounds absolutely evil. Err... maybe that's just basic sound business practice?

Upper management may or may not be rotten, but you don't really explain what was "evil" about their actions.

30 Billion Base Pairs

[Sentriculus]

Someone has probably already pointed out that human DNA contains 3 billion base pairs and not 30 billion. It is a sad shame that a company as renown as Celera is overshadowed by blatant misinformation; even from former CEO Craig Venter who is known for calling archea a type of bacteria in the December 2004 issue of SCIENCE magazine. Mishaps like this further alienate the real intellectuals who would normally be capable of over-running the Internet towards an information rapture in the scientific community.

-Bio major/Nerd

Re:Does anyone remember...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to discount Jim Kent, but your post is riddled with errors. The "race" you speak of was really just an ego thing, anyway. Neither the public nor provate sequence is technically "done" yet even today. Don't believe me? Look at the sequence, the tens of thousands of N's you see aren't supposed to be there. If there ever was a race, it's still on - it's just not covered in the news.

Jim Kent did not sequence anything. Big machines run by lots of people around the world bought with your tax dollars did that. It was improvements in these machines (called capillary sequencers) which turned this from a 20 year problem to a 3 year problem, not some coder. C programs do not do sequencing.

Celera had already solved the assembly problem anyway. There's a guy at Celera who wrote a similar program who, for some reason, is not a "hero" simply because he worked at a corporation. Albeit, the guy at Celera technically had an easier job (because he had both the "private" data and the public data to work with), but he still did it.

Like him or not, if there's a hero its J. Craig Venter. Shotgun sequencing was his idea. He proved it worked. He drummed up the support (i.e. money) and got the Perkin Elmer people to build the better sequencers needed to get the job done quickly. Kudos to the academics for keeping up to the corporate world here and the taxpayers for footing the bill, but that's hardly the work of Jim Kent.