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Venter Institute Claims Patent on Synthetic Life
jimsnail writes "J. Craig Venter and the Institute that bears his name are again moving into new territory in the field of genetics. Genetic patents, that is. They are seeking a broad patent that would give them ownership of a 'free living organism that can grow and replicate' constructed entirely from synthetic DNA. The ETC Group is challenging the claim. 'Scientists at the institute designed the bacterium to have a "minimal genome"--the smallest set of genes any organism can live on. The project, which began in the early 2000s, was partly a philosophical exercise: to help define life itself better by identifying its bare-bones requirements. But it was also fraught with commercial possibilities: if one could reliably recreate a standardized, minimal life form, other useful genes could be added in as needed for various purposes.'"
I just patented DNA replication. That's right. J. Craig Vetner, along with everyone else here, must pay up now, be sued, or die.
My blog
Uh, doesnt that seem rather overbroad? I mean, there's nothing about methodology, just 'we own any synthetic life.' What utter bullshit. Why dont they try to patent nonsynthetic life while they're at it?
Come read my stupid blagablog. Rants and Giggles
You can't hug your children with synthetic DNA arms!
If God (or someone else) did truly intelligently design life, that would mean all life forms are synthetic. Hence, prior art exists.
Did I just discover a scientifically *useful* application of ID wack-theory? If so, is the universe going to implode, or am I about to be flamed to fiery hell by people who never evolved a sarcasmeter?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Sorry, you were patented....please pay $xx,xxx.xx in order to continue living!
Here's the patent application.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
ok then I'll patent a critical gene that this guy has in his DNA and pull a MAFIAA on him if he reproduces. then have genes renamed "files" and if he ever tries to hire a hooker it'll be illegal file sharing :)
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
My reaction to this is mixed. First, I'm suspicious of this kind of sweeping patent protection in general. And it is far from clear (in the cited article at least) that they actually have such a genome yet, so patent protection seems strange. "We think we are going to do this, so grant us a patent."
On the other hand it may take 20 years or so to actually be able to use this kind of technology in meaningful ways (and have drugs produced this way approved by the government). So granting patent protection now means that it would expire just about the time that people might be able to take advantage of it.
On the other other hand, if they really are patenting the idea, they'll probably re-patent (or extend the patent with new claims or however that works) any usable variation when they actually get it so they're likely to find ways to stretch such patent protection out for quite a while.
Karen Travis SF books about a future Earth where all life has been patented and copyrighted to the point that it's illegal to have unaltered seeds is starting to become true.
From the article: "The researchers filed their patent claim on the artificial organism and on its genome."
These guys have created a brand new form of life from the ground up and are patenting their particular genome. It's hard work, and certainly not obvious or trivial. Given that other biological systems are patentable (e.g., the Harvard mouse, new strains of wheat), this certainly seems to clear the bar for patentability.
Venter isn't claiming a patent on the entire concept of synthetic life, he's claiming a patent on A synthetic life form. As the article says, patents on genetically modified life forms aren't anything new. What's new is this is a life form created entirely from scratch (or at least as much from scratch as you can get when you already know how other life works).
AccountKiller
..but I have no life. If anyone wants me, I'm in the basement.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
Presumably, this is a part of the transition to an "IP economy", and they've been instructed to keep lower standards as to make sure most of the IP cake has been divided before the international competition becomes too rough.
And then they use heavy-handed tactics to force other countries to submit, misusing the Berne convention and the WTO, forcing the world to implement patent and copyright law that doesn't reflect the original intentions behind patents and copyright at all.
Patents and copyright as they have become does no longer serve the interests of society, nor even the long-term interests of the companies that gain them.
It's been said before, but I can't seem to find the original quote, that the emergence of the Internet wouldn't have been possible if patents had been used then as it is today. What other emerging markets are we closing down with these overbroad patents? What does this madness really cost us? There's no way we can know.
Of course, the harder they tighten their grip, the more nations will start slipping through their fingers
I wonder when the first real copyright/patent/data havens show up. Imagine the advantages companies located within such a nation would get. Of course, they would be unlikely to be allowed to sell their wares on the open market, but the citizens within this country could possibly rise to a much higher standard of living, and of course smuggling would be extremely lucrative...
I'm a dreamer, the world is my playpen. But hey, I'm a serious person, I can't dream all the time.
They are trying to patent the minimum genome neccesary for this particular bacteria to exist. It's no different than any other attempts to patent the parts or the whole genome of certain organisms. IMHO, it a big deal about nothing, I don't see how is genetically engineered bacteria any different than a patenting a machine that does the same job. The patent is very specific as to the length and variations in the genome sequence and could not be applied (as far as I can tell) to synthetic life in general.
Ok, so what do we know?
Lifeforms reproduce themselves, patterning surrounding matter and
energy into more of their own form.
Over several billions of years, natural ecosystems have evolved
checks and balances on overabundance of any particular lifeform.
Other lifeforms co-evolved and the lifeforms limit each other
(by eating each other, by competing for the same resources, etc.)
The ecosystems change, but rather gradually, as many stalemates
(equilibria) in the energy and strategy balance of the
competitive patterning game evolve.
So now we have Joe or Jane Scientist, or gene-engineer, thinking
"I'm pretty damn smart. I know my sh*t.
Got it 'Piled higher & Deeper' in fact.
Why don't I just unleash my patented self-replicating, resource-patterning
machine, and let's see what happens.
On the bright side, most things they could come up with will be no match
for the 3 billion year evolved competition.
On the other side, they could be unlucky, and make something that no other
lifeform recognized, or could eat, or could compete with for resources.
Oh, too bad. Start game over.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
HA! I one upped you! I patented RNAML a markup language used to model RNA and DNAML and anything like it. You'll all screwed as you can no longer describe what you want to patent.
MUHAHAHAHAHA! MUHAHAHAHA!
Evil genius is me!
Oops, how did this get here?
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I'm a GRA in a biomedical lab and took a course once on bioengineering, the topic of the patent.
As mentioned previously they're not patenting synthetic life but a specific minimal set of genes required to produce a replicating bacterium. There was a non-trivial amount of work that went into researching these genes and determining the least combinations necessary for replication in a solution that provides all the basic building blocks (ie. this bacteria will not be synthesizing its own amino acids, I would imagine).
This is could be important for industrial biosynthetic applications. Every protein expressed by a bacteria increases its metabolic load and decreases the efficiency with which it can convert input (sugars, amino acids, nucleotides) into the desired output (insulin, drugs, other useful biocompounds). By determining the minimum necessary set of genes for replication a ground-state bacteria has been designed that can be used as the starting point for designing more efficient expression systems.
It also allows these expression systems to be more fully characterized which can help when attempting to determine and modulate the effect metabolic load and evolution will have on a vat of bacteria as it progresses from generation to generation. One problem with these systems is that synthesizing extra compounds increases the metabolic and decreases the replication rate. If it is possible for the bacteria to mutate and stop expression of the product their metabolic load decreases and they begin to replicate faster; this causes vats of bacteria to tend to evolve such that they stop producing the useful compound. There are ways to get around this (such as turning production on and off using external chemical signals, tying production to survival, etc.) that might be optimized in such a minimal system. Engineering life is tricky because of the extremely high number of potential interactions to be analyzed for every new configuration; it is more difficult because many of these interactions can't be calculated or simulated.
This patent won't be all that useful for more complex human proteins as these require an array of post-translational modification proteins that change the product after the initial synthesis; thus they require a correspondingly complex expression system derived from a yeast cell or an animal cell (I think some worms have been used to develop complex expression systems); Alternately bacteria can be modified to produce the modification proteins. These expression systems have doubtless already been patented or are no longer patentable, so this new patent probably won't be very useful until it is bundled with a set of associated patents for efficient expression systems for various compounds.
Yes, but I used siRNA to silence your patent.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --