I'm a fourth year molecular biology grad student, and the proteins I've chosen to study have been limited to only my imagination. I don't understand the business end of this prospect. Just last week I read that a certain protein is not expressed in the cell line I'm studying. To obtain that protein, I had the freedom to purchase the gene ligated into a commercial plasmid from a number of companies. But since the cDNA of this protein could fairly easily be amplified from any donor tissue, how can a company with a patent stop me from using it?
As a scientist, am I supposed to pay somebody to use it? I don't think so.
Though the article isn't clear about it, I think this only applies to people who intend to use certain genes for bioremediative therapy of some sort - for profit. This does not seem to affect the scores of scientists researching the patented genes. So research won't slow down, but the marketplace for any beneficial applications might. (But with the lag of the FDA anyway, what else is new?)
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I'm a fourth year molecular biology grad student, and the proteins I've chosen to study have been limited to only my imagination. I don't understand the business end of this prospect. Just last week I read that a certain protein is not expressed in the cell line I'm studying. To obtain that protein, I had the freedom to purchase the gene ligated into a commercial plasmid from a number of companies. But since the cDNA of this protein could fairly easily be amplified from any donor tissue, how can a company with a patent stop me from using it?
As a scientist, am I supposed to pay somebody to use it? I don't think so.
Though the article isn't clear about it, I think this only applies to people who intend to use certain genes for bioremediative therapy of some sort - for profit. This does not seem to affect the scores of scientists researching the patented genes. So research won't slow down, but the marketplace for any beneficial applications might. (But with the lag of the FDA anyway, what else is new?)