Scientists at the J Craig Venter Institute, Maryland, have applied for a US patent on a minimal bacterial genome that they built themselves, or a designer microbe they have claimed to assemble from scratch. According to the patent application, it's “a minimal set of protein-coding genes which provides the information required for replication of a free-living organism in a rich bacterial culture medium.” Using a simple bacterium called Mycoplasma genitalium to roughly figure out the minimal number of genes it would take for an organism to live, the team arrived at their ‘live’ product. They now intend to patent this simply because it does not exist in nature and is their creation! The synthetic organism has been named Synthia. The application for the organism is to produce ethanol or hydrogen for fuel.

Patenting is big business in the US today. More than 4000 DNA based patents are granted every year. In a similar case in 1979, Prof Anand Chakrabarty attracted world attention when he applied for the first patent on a living organism — a genetically engineered bacterium able to digest oil spills. The US Supreme Court granted the patent on the contention that it was his creation rather than something found in nature. In Michael Crichton’s ‘Next’ we saw Frank Burnett suing the company that has made away with his cell lines derived from tissues taken from his body during a treatment for cancer. His DNA has a gene that works effectively against cancer. That is the kind of fear in everybody’s mind as biotech companies get set to reap a harvest on the new global currency - the gene.

By patenting bacteria that cause certain diseases, companies stand to rake profit through royalties on any vaccine or drug against the illness. Till now the applications had been limited by and large to individual genes or microbiological processes with commercial uses. By blanket patenting of gene sequence any use of the data in drug discovery or medicine will suffer. It is also feared that this will damage research as any new work by companies will be kept under secrecy. The counter-argument is that patents are only for 20 years and anyone who adds on further stands to gain. Once unleashed, this high-stakes commercial race to synthesise and privatise synthetic life forms can spell danger to what constitutes life. Craig Venter's company is poised to become what an activist group terms the ‘Microbesoft’ of synthetic biology.