4 ms·
What if you engineer a completely novel protein, with novel regulatory sequences, for a novel function? Should you be unable to patent such an invention?
by daughart 13y ago
What if you engineer a completely novel protein, with novel regulatory sequences, for a novel function? Should you be unable to patent such an invention?
- shmerl 13y agoNo, I principally think than biosubstances should not be patentable. The fact that DNA was generated artificially doesn't make it somehow magically different from the natural one.
- daughart 13y agoWhat I'm referring to is not only synthesis (artificially generating), but design and engineering. This is substantively different than natural products, in that they are truly invented.
- ryusage 13y agoThe problem I have with it is that, in all cases, any synthetic DNA could exist in nature. We can't even verify with 100% certainty that any given sequence doesn't already exist in nature. If it doesn't exist already, it could in the future, naturally, through evolution.
- daughart 13y agoAs I pointed out to shmerl above, sequence space is very large, and in general sparsely populated. A functional gene product and regulatory sequence is often thousands of base pairs. 4^1000 = 10^600. There are only 10^80 molecules in the universe. So if you have done truly de novo design, you can be pretty sure it doesn't exist somewhere else by random chance. That being said, I think that even if you take a natural gene and modify it meaningfully - that should be patent-able. For instance, if you take an enzyme and engineer a version that doesn't degrade as readily, or has much better activity, that should be patent-able, don't you think? EDIT: There's a good deal of prior art regarding numbers. As for patenting molecules, we allow that all the time... drugs, compounds, etc. Because they are discovered as I describe above.
- shmerl 13y agoAgain, getting into arguments of making molecules patentable because there are so many combinations available is bizarre. Why not make numbers patentable as well - there is an infinite amount of them.
- Kliment 13y agoHonestly, no, it should not be patentable. This is entirely equivalent to a software patent.
- daughart 13y agoReally? Say goodbye to the promise of synthetic biology then!
- shmerl 13y agoYou can say goodbye to it if that will be patentable. Someone will patent all combinations - and goodbye.
- daughart 13y agoI suspect you are a troll, but I will respond anyway... Sequence space is very large. There are only a total of 8 million US patents. There are 16 million 12-base-pair nucleotide sequences. To patent the sequence space of a functional product and regulatory region would require more patents than there are molecules in the universe. Also to patent something you have to show use.
- shmerl 13y agoI was showing sarcasm. Patenting a molecule is a ridiculous idea, but you insist that it's about the process of making it. I'm pointing out that the result is not about the process, but about the molecule.
- daughart 13y agoI genuinely don't understand your point. If a group of people synthesize and test many synthetic DNA sequences and then patent the useful ones, that seems fine to me. You might even call them "synthetic biologists". They have invented new things, which are not found in nature, by the process of their own skills, knowledge, and labor, and which are useful to other people. It seems perfectly reasonable that those inventions should be protected by the patent system.