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'Treasure Trove' In Oceans May Bring Revolutions In Medicine and Industry
dryriver sends this excerpt from the Guardian:
"Scientists have pinpointed a new treasure trove in our oceans: micro-organisms that contain millions of previously unknown genes and thousands of new families of proteins. These tiny marine wonders offer a chance to exploit a vast pool of material that could be used to create innovative medicines, industrial solvents, chemical treatments and other processes, scientists say. Researchers have already created new enzymes for treating sewage and chemicals for making soaps from material they have found in ocean organisms. 'The potential for marine biotechnology is almost infinite,' says Curtis Suttle, professor of earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences at the University of British Columbia. 'It has become clear that most of the biological and genetic diversity on Earth is – by far – tied up in marine ecosystems, and in particular in their microbial components. By weight, more than 95% of all living organisms found in the oceans are microbial. This is an incredible resource.'"
Because you can patent it, sell it and use the profits to buy off, er, make generous campaign contributions.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
What does "almost infinite" even mean?
In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice, they're not.
Too bad PETA will not allow us to exploit bacteria in this cruel manner. You have to ask their permission first. Individually.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
You are entirely right! Industry prefers to have the government research it and then take the credit and profits for the research. Just like industry prefers to have small businesses take the risks and then steal the business and profit from them.
We've used up all the fish. Now we can work on the smaller stuff!
I'm old enough to remember when the Rain Forest was the "treasure trove" of new medicines.
Even then, the documentarians had the wit to point out that the main goal of researching all those new wonderful plant cures would be to figure out how they could create synthetic versions of nature's miracles and patent them.
So, you know what? I don't give a shit. If somebody finds something revolutionary and decides to share it with humanity, then by all means please slap me around some and make sure I am aware of it. Because not even the invention of aspirin (developed from old common knowledge about the medicinal properties of willow bark) went without patent-related controversy.
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
Cause outside the US most people are covered by a good public health care program?
Tomorrow is another day...
GOSE also aimed to trawl the bio-diversity of marine life in order to perform metagenomics analysis and find out about the diversity of marine genetic material. All of the data was put into UC-San-Diego's division of Cal-I-T2 (a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Institute_for_Telecommunications_and_Information_Technology>California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology
Sorry guys, but you need to park that expanded self opinion someplace. Life on the planet is just fine. Hell, after the big asteroid hit, the earth was blasted, smothered, roasted, frozen, and left in the dark for month or years. Ten million years later an the diversity was extraordinary. We're the endangered species, and yeah we'll take out a slew of vertebrates with us.
Maybe because it goes the other way in reality: the government funds the basic research, and then gives to private industries, often for next to nothing, who then sell it if it's profitable. Example: taxol.
Look at it this way: most of the bragging about government achievements is done by politicians who signed off on it telling you why they should be re-elected or elected to higher offices. Big pharma spends way more on taking credit for medical breakthroughs (or just as often, trying to tell you something that's just repackaging is actually a medical breakthrough.) Who do you think gets credit in that tug of war? It's not the government-funded scientists either way.