* 14 December 2007

    * From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.

WILL genomics pioneer Craig Venter be the next Bill Gates, enjoying a Microsoft-like grip on a future industry based on synthetic forms of life? That was the claim of an advocacy group concerned about the social implications of technologies earlier this year, after Venter's institute applied for a patent on a synthetic "minimal genome" (New Scientist, 16 June, p 13).

Now the Ottawa-based ETC Group is raising the alarm again. In the past few weeks, two patent applications by scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute were published. These cover methods for making synthetic genomes and for inserting whole or partial genomes into natural or artificial cells. If granted with all their claims intact, the patents would give rights to a broad sweep of techniques in synthetic biology - an emerging field that aims to build biological devices constructed in part from chemically synthesised DNA.

“The patents would grant rights to synthetic biology's basic techniques”

"If" is the key word, however. George Church, a synthetic biologist at Harvard University, believes that many of the claims will be rejected on the grounds of "obviousness". And it remains to be seen whether some of the methods described for getting synthetic DNA into cells will actually work. "This is a case of using the patent system as a type of futures market to take out options," suggests Paul Oldham of the Centre for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics at Lancaster University, UK.

The Venter Institute did not reply to requests for a comment.