Artificial life - Patent pending

Jun 14th 2007
From The Economist print edition

Move over Dolly. Synthia is on her way

YOU have to hand it to Craig Venter, he is not someone who thinks small. The latest adventure of the man who was the first to sequence the genome of a living organism (three weeks after his grant request to do so was rejected on the grounds it was impossible), the first to publish the genome of an identifiable human being (himself) and the first to conceive the idea of sequencing the genome of an entire ecosystem (and to enjoy a nice cruise across the Pacific Ocean in his yacht while he did so) is curiously reminiscent of the incident that made him a controversial figure in the first place. That was when, 16 years ago, he attempted to patent parts of several hundred genes—the first time anyone had tried to take out a patent on more than one gene at a time.

This time, he is proposing to patent not merely a few genes, but life itself. Not all of life, of course. At least, not yet. Rather, he has applied for a patent on the synthetic bacterium that he and his colleagues Clyde Hutchison and Hamilton Smith have been working on for the past few years.

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http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9333408 

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