Artificial life created by Craig Venter - but could it wipe out humanity? | Daily Mail Online comments Scientists today lined up to air their fears over a genome pioneer's claims that he has created artificial life in the laboratory. In a world first, which has alarmed many, maverick biologist and billionaire entrepreneur Craig Venter, built a synthetic cell from scratch. The creation of the new life form, which has been nicknamed 'Synthia', paves the way for customised bugs that could revolutionise healthcare and fuel production, according to its maker. But there are fears that the research, detailed in the journal Science, could be abused to create the ultimate biological weapon, or that one mistake in a lab could lead to millions being wiped out by a plague, in scenes reminiscent of the Will Smith film I Am Legend. [caption] While some hailed the research as 'a defining moment in the history of biology', others attacked it as 'a shot in the dark', with 'unparalleled risks'. The team involved have been accused of 'playing God' and tampering 'with the essence of life'. RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share Dr Venter created the lifeform by synthesising a DNA code and injecting it into a single bacteria cell.

The cell containing the man-made DNA then grew and divided, creating a hitherto unseen lifeform. Kenneth Oye, a social scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S., said: 'Right now, we are shooting in the dark as to what the long-term benefits and long-term risks will be.' [caption] Pat Mooney, of the ETC group, a technology watchdog with a special interest in synthetic biology, said: 'This is a Pandora's box moment - like the splitting of the atom or the cloning of Dolly the sheep, we will all have to deal with the fall-out from this alarming experiment.' Dr David King, of the Human Genetics Alert watchdog, said: 'What is really dangerous is these scientists' ambitions for total and unrestrained control over nature, which many people describe as 'playing God'. 'Scientists' understanding of biology falls far short of their technical capabilities. We have learned to our cost the risks that gap brings, for the environment, animal welfare and human health.' Professor Julian Savulescu, an Oxford University ethicist, said: 'Venter is creaking open the most profound door in humanity's history, potentially peeking into its destiny.

'He is not merely copying life artificially or modifying it by genetic engineering. He is going towards the role of God: Creating artificial life that could never have existed.' He said the creation of the first designer bug was a step towards 'the creation of living beings with capacities and a nature that could never have naturally evolved'. The risks were 'unparalleled',' he added. And he warned: 'This could be used in the future to make the most powerful bioweapons imaginable. The challenge is to eat the fruit without the worm.' Dr Venter, who was instrumental in sequencing the human genome, had previously succeeded in transplanting one bug's genome - its entire cache of DNA - into another bacterium, effectively changing its species. He has taken this one step further, transplanting not a natural genome but a man-made one. To do this, he read the DNA of Mycoplasma mycoides, a bug that infects goats, and recreated it piece by piece. The fragments were then 'stitched together' and inserted into a bacterium from a different species. There, it sprang to life, allowing the bug to grow and multiply, producing generations that were entirely artificial.

The transferred DNA contained around 850 genes - a fraction of the 20,000 or so contained in a human's genetic blueprint. In future, bacterial 'factories' could be set up to manufacture artificial organisms designed for specific tasks such as medicines or producing clean biofuels. The technology could also be harnessed to create environmentally friendly bugs capable of mopping up carbon dioxide or toxic waste. Dr Venter, a 63-year-old Vietnam War veteran known for his showman tendencies, said last night: 'We are entering a new era where we're limited mostly by our imaginations.' But the breakthrough, which took 15 years and £27.7million to achieve, opens an ethical Pandora's box. Ethicists said he is 'creaking open the most profound door in humanity's history' - with unparalleled risks. Dr Venter, whose team of 20 scientists includes a Nobel laureate, likens the process to booting-up a computer. Like a program without a hard drive, the DNA doesn't do anything by itself. But, when the software is loaded into the computer - in this case the second bacterium - amazing things are possible, he said.

'WATERMARKING' DNA This dramatic development naturally raises fears of the dangers these organisms pose. So one idea, which has been followed through by Venter and his team, is to 'watermark' them. By weaving these hidden codes in it enables scientists to trace the organisms to their laboratories and prove the recipient bacteria contained the synthetic genome. Researchers used the 'alphabet' of genes and proteins to spell out messages. The team created a code that spells out the 26 letters of the alphabet, the numbers 0 to 9 and several punctuation marks. They then wrote a message which reveals the code. A second missive was a string of 'letters' corresponding to the names of 46 people involved in the project. A third gave an e-mail address where people can write once they crack the code and the fourth listed three philosophical quotes. Now that the scientist, whose J Craig Venter Institute has labs in California and Maryland, has proved the concept, the path is open for him to alter the 'recipe' to create any sort of organism he chooses. At the top of his wishlist are bugs capable of producing clean biofuels and of sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Other possibilities include designer microbes that can mop up oil slicks or generate huge quantities of drugs, including the flu vaccine. Any such organisms would be deliberately 'crippled' so that they cannot survive outside the lab, he claimed. Brushing aside the ethical concerns of his work, Dr Venter wrote in his autobiography that it would allow 'a new creature to enter the world'. 'We have often been asked if this will be a step too far,' he said. 'I always reply that - so far at least - we are only reconstructing a diminished version of what is out there in nature.' Last night, he claimed the breakthrough had changed his views on the definition of life. 'We have ended up with the first synthetic cell powered and controlled by a synthetic chromosome and made from four bottles of chemicals,' he said. 'It is pretty stunning when you just replace the DNA software in a cell and the cell instantly starts reading that new software and starts making a whole new set of proteins, and within a short while all the characteristics of the first species disappear and a new species emerges. 'That's a pretty important change in how we approach and think about life.' The process was carried out on one of the simplest types of bacteria, under strict ethical guidelines.

The research team insist that they cannot think of a day when the technology could be used to create animals or people from scratch. Has he created a monster? By Michael Hanlon, Science Editor The creation of a living being in a laboratory is one of the staples of science fiction. Now it is a scientific fact. Yesterday's announcement of the birth of a 'synthetic cell' - made by injecting a bacterium shell with genetic material created from scratch by scientists - raises many questions. [caption] These range from the mundanely practical - how will this be useful? - to the profoundly philosophical - will we have to redefine what life is? Depending on your viewpoint, it is either a powerful testament to human ingenuity or a terrible example of hubris - and the first step on a very dangerous road. To understand what this development means, we need to discover who the team behind this innovation is. It is led by Craig Venter, the world's greatest scientific provocateur, a 63-year-old Utah-born genius, a Vietnam veteran, billionaire, yachtsman, and an explorer. Above all he is a showman.

A master of self-publicity, he does not do things by halves; he led the private team which competed with scores of publicly funded scientists in the U.S. and UK to 'crack' the human genome by sequencing our DNA. His rapid, innovative approach led to the possibility he would beat the scientific establishment. So, to save face all round, the human genome was presented as a joint achievement. At around the same time, he began talking about making an artificial lifeform in the lab. Not a Frankenstein's monster, or even a mouse, but a bacterium, one of the simplest living organisms. His blueprint was to be an unassuming and harmless little germ with only 485 genes (humans have around 25,000). Venter talks grandly of a supercharged biotech revolution, with synthetic bacteria designed to produce biofuels, to mine precious metals from rocks and industrial waste, to digest oil slicks and render toxic spills harmless. WHO IS CRAIG VENTER? Craig Venter is a controversial biologist and entrepreneur who led the effort by the private sector to sequence the human genome.

He was vilified by the scientific community for turning the project into a competitive race but his efforts did mean that the human genome was mapped three years earlier than expected. Born in 1946, Dr Venter was an average scholar with a keen interest in surfing. It was while serving in Vietnam and tending to wounded comrades that he was inspired to become a doctor. During his medical training he excelled in research and was quick to realise the importance of decoding genes. In 1992 he set up the private Institute for Genomic Research. Then a mere three years later he stunned the scientific establishment by revealing the first complete genome of a free-living organism that causes childhood ear infections and meningitis. In 2005 he founded the private company Synthetic Genomics, with the aim of engineering new life forms the would produce alternative fuels. He was listed on Time Magazine's 100 list of the most influential people in both 2007 and 2008. Scientists could even create bacteria which can produce novel drugs and vaccines, or organisms engineered to live on Mars and other planets. The potential is huge - but so are the dangers.

An artificial species, created in the lab, might not 'obey the rules' of the natural world - after all, every living being on Earth has evolved over three billion years, when a myriad of competing species have had to share the same increasingly crowded environment. It is possible to imagine a synthetic microbe going on the rampage, perhaps wiping out all the world's crop plants or even humanity itself. Synthetic biology also challenges our most cherished notions of what life itself actually is. Non-scientists might not realise that we have, as yet, no proper definition of life. A diamond is not alive; a baboon clearly is. But what about a virus? Viruses, which are even simpler than bacteria, have a genetic code written in DNA (or its cousin RNA). The stuff viruses are made from is the stuff of life - protein coats and so on - yet they cannot reproduce independently. Like diamonds, they can be grown into crystals - and you certainly cannot crystallise baboons. Most biologists say viruses are not alive, and that true biology begins with bacteria. So is Synthia, Venter's tentative name for his new critter, alive?

It is certainly not the result of Darwinian evolution, one of the (many) definitions of life. It is more 'alive' than any virus but it is the product of Man, not of evolution. Its genetic code is simple enough to be stored on a computer (but then again, so is ours). Whatever the answer to this fundamental question, Venter's breakthrough is certainly the final rebuttal to the old notion of a vital spark - a mysterious essence that divides the quick from the dead. If you can carry around a genome on a computer memory stick and make a cell using a few simple chemicals, then the old idea of 'vitalism' is truly dead. Of course, this is early days. It is not yet clear if Venter can negotiate the final step - creating a whole cell from scratch, using no bits of existing living organisms at all. His bacterium is likely to be weak and feeble; we are a long way from synthetic super-plagues, and even further from an artificial animal or plant. But it is hard to escape the feeling that a boundary has been crossed. The problem is, it is far from clear where we go from here.

US scientist creates 'artificial life' - Wikinews, the free news source US scientist creates 'artificial life' From Wikinews, the free news source you can write! This is the stable version , checked on 5 April 2014. Template/file changes await review. Accuracy Friday, May 21, 2010 Venter in 2007. American biologist Craig Venter has announced that he has created the first ever " artificial life form " on Earth at the J. Craig Venter Institute , a U.S. laboratory and research center. The breakthrough is the culmination of fifteen years of research and builds upon earlier work, research which saw the creation of a synthetic bacterial genome and the transplant of a genome from one species of bacteria into a second. "Synthia", a nickname derived from synthetic lifeform, combines these two techniques to create a "new lifeform". A genome was created using synthetic chromosomes made from bottles of chemicals, the chromosomes sequenced to create a genome using as a template an existing bacterium. A bacterium from different species then had its own genome removed and the synthetic one transplanted in its place.

Venter's achievement is that the new genome switched on and the new cell was able to replicate. A process likened to the booting of a computer with a new operating system. Venter's achievement has been dismissed by some as falling short of a true technological breakthrough, claiming that rather than creating a new genome, that he has merely recreated the genome of an existing bacterium: "a technical tour de force" but not breakthrough science, according to Caltech geneticist David Baltimore . Amongst the possibilities of artificial bacteria talked about are bacteria tailored to solve climate change by taking CO2 out of the atmosphere and to develop new vaccines. More complex organisms could include algae which would both be a source of biofuels and a CO2 remover. This is not, however, the instant solution to the Earth's major problems. Although enough is now known to duplicate a genome, there is insufficient knowledge as to what the role of individual chromosomes within the genome do. Any advances in synthetic biology to design life forms would require a much greater understanding of how the creation of proteins are coded in a genome's chromosomes. Have an opinion on this story? Share it!

Related news Craig Venter Craig Venter Craig Venter John Craig Venter (born October 14, 1946) is an American biologist and entrepreneur, most famous for his role in being one of the first to sequence the human genome[1] and for his role in creating the first synthetic cell in 2010.[2] Venter founded Celera Genomics, The Institute for Genomic Research and the J. Craig Venter Institute, now working at the latter to create synthetic biological organisms and to document genetic diversity in the world's oceans. He was listed on Time Magazine's 2007 and 2008 Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. Early life Venter was born in Salt Lake City, Utah.

In his youth, Venter did not take his education seriously, preferring to spend his time on the water in boats or surfing.[citation needed] According to his biography, A Life Decoded, he was said to be never a terribly engaged student, having Cs and Ds on his eighth grade report cards.[3][not specific enough to verify] According to Time Magazine, it was not always evident that Venter would become a transformative figure, particularly when he was a boy. Although being against the Vietnam War,[citation needed] Venter was drafted and enlisted in the United States Navy where he worked in the intensive care ward of a field hospital. Being confronted with wounded, maimed, and dying soldiers on a daily basis instilled in him a desire to study medicine[4] — although later on he switched to scientific medical research. Education Venter graduated from Mills High School and began his college career at a community college, College of San Mateo in California. He received his B.S. degree in biochemistry in 1972, and his Ph.D. degree in physiology and pharmacology in 1975, both from the University of California, San Diego. At UCSD, he studied under biochemist Nathan O.

Kaplan,[5] and married former Ph.D. candidate Barbara Rae.[6][7][8][9]After working as an associate and later full professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, he joined the National Institutes of Health in 1984. In Buffalo, he divorced Dr. Rae-Venter and married his student, Claire M. Fraser,[7] remaining married to her until 2005.[10] Discovery While at the NIH, Venter learned of a technique for rapidly identifying all of the mRNAs present in a cell and began to use it to identify human brain genes. The short cDNA sequence fragments discovered by this method are called expressed sequence tags (ESTs) a name coined by Anthony Kerlavage at The Institute for Genomic Research. The NIH initially led an effort to patent these gene fragments, of which Venter coincidentally and controversially became involved.[11][improper synthesis?] The NIH later withdrew the patent applications after public outcry. Subsequent court cases declared that ESTs were not directly patentable.[12] Human Genome Project Venter was passionate about the power of genomics to radically transform healthcare.

Venter believed that shotgun sequencing was the fastest and most effective way to get useful human genome data.[13] The method was controversial, however, since some geneticists felt it would not be accurate enough for a genome as complicated as the human.[14][not in citation given] Frustrated with what Venter viewed as the slow pace of progress in the Human Genome project, and unable to get funds for his ideas, he sought funding from the private sector to found Celera Genomics. The goal of the company was to sequence the entire human genome and release it into the public domain for non-commercial use in much less time and for much less cost than the public human genome project. The company planned to monetize their work by creating a value added database of genomic data that users could subscribe to for a fee. The goal consequently put pressure on the public genome program and spurred several groups to redouble their efforts to produce the full sequence. DNA from five demographically different individuals was used by Celera to generate the sequence of the human genome; one of them being Venter. In 2000, Venter and Francis Collins of the National Institutes of Health and U.S.

Public Genome Project jointly made the announcement of the mapping of the human genome in 2000, a full three years ahead of the expected end of the Public Genome Program. The announcement was made along with US President Bill Clinton, and U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair.[15] Venter and Collins thus shared an award for "Biography of the Year" from A&E Network.[16] Celera published the first Human Genome in the Journal Science, and was soon followed by a Human Genome Project Publication in Nature.[17][18] Despite some claims that shotgun sequencing was in some ways less accurate than the clone-by-clone method chosen by the Human Genome Project,[19] the technique became widely accepted by the scientific community and is still used today. After completing the Human Genome, and releasing it into the public domain, Venter was fired by Celera in early 2002.[20] According to his biography, Venter was ready to leave Celera, and was fired due to conflict with the main investor, Tony White, that had existed since day one of the project.

Venter writes that his main goal was always to accelerate science and thereby discovery, and he only sought help from the corporate world when he couldn't find funding in the public sector. Current work Venter is currently the president of the J. Craig Venter Institute, which conducts research in synthetic biology. In June 2005, he co-founded Synthetic Genomics, a firm dedicated to using modified microorganisms to produce clean fuels and biochemicals. In July 2009, ExxonMobil announced a $600 million collaboration with Synthetic Genomics to research and develop next-generation biofuels.[21] Venter used his sloop, Sorcerer II, in the Global Ocean Sampling Expedition to help assess genetic diversity in marine microbial communities.[22] Media coverage This section needs reorganization to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. There is good information here, but it is poorly organized; editors are encouraged to be bold and make changes to the overall structure to improve this article. (October 2009) This "In popular culture" section may contain minor or trivial references. Please reorganize this content to explain the subject's impact on popular culture rather than simply listing appearances, and remove trivial references.

(October 2009) Venter has been the subject of articles in several magazines, including Wired,[23] The Economist,[24] Australian science magazine Cosmos,[25][26] and The Atlantic.[27] Additionally, he was featured on The Colbert Report on both February 27, 2007, and October 30, 2007. Venter appeared in the "Evolution" episode of the documentary television series Understanding. On May 16, 2004, Venter gave the commencement speech at Boston University.[28] In a 2007 interview with New Scientist when asked "Assuming you can make synthetic bacteria, what will you do with them?", Venter replied: Over the next 20 years, synthetic genomics is going to become the standard for making anything. The chemical industry will depend on it. Hopefully, a large part of the energy industry will depend on it. We really need to find an alternative to taking carbon out of the ground, burning it, and putting it into the atmosphere. That is the single biggest contribution I could make.

Furthermore it suggests that one of the main purposes for creating synthetic bacteria would be to reduce the dependence on fossil fuels through bioremediation.[29] On May 10, 2007, Venter was awarded an honorary doctorate from Arizona State University.[30], and on October 24 of the same year, he received an honorary doctorate from Imperial College London.[31] He was on the 2007 Time 100 most influential people in the world list made by Time magazine. In 2007 he also received the Golden Eurydice Award for contributions to Biophilosophy. On September 4, 2007, a team led by Venter published the first complete (six-billion-letter) genome of an individual human — Venter's own DNA sequence.[32] On BBC News on October 22, 2007, when asked about his religious view he replied that he thought that a true scientist could not believe in supernatural explanations.[not specific enough to verify] On December 4, 2007, Venter gave the Dimbleby lecture for the BBC in London. He outlined his current work and future developments in genetics.

In February 2008, he gave a speech about his current work at the TED conference.[33] Venter delivered the 2008 convocation speech for Faculty of Science honours and specialization students at the University of Alberta. A transcription of the speech is available here.[34] Dr. Venter was featured in Time Magazine's "The Top 10 Everything of 2008" article. Number three in 2008's Top 10 Scientific Discoveries was a piece outlining his work stitching together the 582,000 base pairs necessary to invent the genetic information for a whole new bacterium.[35] Dr. Venter took part in the inaugural San Diego Science Festival and spoke at its press conference on February 26, 2009. On April 6, 2009, Venter gave a speech at Arizona State University as part of the Origins Symposium. For an episode aired on July 27, 2009, Venter was interviewed on his boat by BBC One for the first episode of TV show Bang Goes the Theory.

Individual human genome sequenced On September 4, 2007, a team led by Sam Levy published the first complete (six-billion-letter) genome of an individual human—Venter's own DNA sequence.[32] Some of the sequences in Venter's genome are associated with wet earwax,[36] increased risk of antisocial behavior, Alzheimer's and cardiovascular diseases.[37] This publication was especially interesting since it contained a diploid instead of a haploid genome and shows promise for personalized medicine via genotyping.[original research?] The Human Reference Genome Browser (HuRef) is a Web application for the navigation and analysis of Venter's recently published genome. The HuRef database consists of approximately 32 million DNA reads sequenced using microfluidic Sanger sequencing, assembled into 4,528 scaffolds and 4.1 million DNA variations identified by genome analysis. These variants include single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), block substitutions, short and large indels, and structural variations like insertions, deletions, inversions[clarification needed] and copy number changes.

The browser enables scientists to navigate the HuRef genome assembly and sequence variations, and to compare it with the NCBI human build 36 assembly in the context of the NCBI and Ensembl annotations. The browser provides a comparative view between NCBI and HuRef consensus sequences, the sequence multi-alignment of the HuRef assembly, Ensembl and dbSNP annotations, HuRef variants, and the underlying variant evidence and functional analysis. The interface also represents the haplotype blocks from which diploid genome sequence can be inferred and the relation of variants to gene annotations. The display of variants and gene annotations are linked to external public resources including dbSNP, Ensembl, Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) and Gene Ontology (GO). Users can search the HuRef genome using HUGO gene names, Ensembl and dbSNP identifiers, HuRef contig or scaffold locations, or NCBI chromosome locations. Users can then easily and quickly browse any genomic region via the simple and intuitive pan and zoom controls; furthermore relevant data in specific loci can be exported for further analysis.

Mycoplasma laboratorium Venter is seeking to patent the first life-form created by humanity, possibly to be named Mycoplasma laboratorium.[38] There is speculation that this line of research could lead to producing bacteria that have been engineered to perform specific reactions, e.g. produce fuels, make medicines, combat global warming, etc.[39] In May 2010, a team of scientists led by Venter became the first to successfully create what was described as "synthetic life".[40][41] This was done by synthesizing a very long DNA molecule containing an entire bacterium genome, and introducing this into another cell. Other scientists have expressed skepticism about the practicality of this approach, which is a competitor to traditional genetic engineering methods, calling the research "'a technical tour de force' but not breakthrough science."[42] Selected bibliography Venter is an ISI highly cited researcher and has authored over 200 publications in scientific journals.[43] * Fleischmann, Robert D.; Adams, Mark D.; White, Owen; Clayton, Rebecca; . . . Venter, J. Craig (July 28, 1995).

"Whole-Genome Random Sequencing and Assembly of Haemophilus influenzae Rd.". Science (Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science) 269 (5223): 496–512. PMID 7542800. * Tomb, Jean-F.; White, Owen; Kerlavage, Anthony R.; Clayton, Rebecca A.; Sutton, Granger G.; Fleischmann, Robert D.; . . . Venter, J. Craig (August 7, 1997). "The complete genome sequence of the gastric pathogen Helicobacter pylori". Nature (London, England: Nature Publishing Group) 388 (6642): 539–47. doi:10.1038/41483. PMID 9252185. * Adams, Mark D.; Celniker, Susan E.; Holt, Robert A.; Evans, Cheryl A.; Goccayne, Jeannine A.; Amanatides, Peter G.; . . . Venter, J. Craig (March 24, 2000).

"The genome sequence of Drosophila melanogaster". Science (Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science) 287 (5461): 2185–95. doi:10.1126/science.287.5461.2185. * Venter, J. Craig; et al. (February 16, 2001). "The Sequence of the Human Genome". Science (journal) (Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science) 291 (5507): 1304–51. doi:10.1126/science.1058040. ISSN 0036-8075. * Venter, J. Craig; Remington, Karin; Heidelberg , John F.; Halpern, Aaron L.; Rusch, Doug; Eisen, Jonathan A.; Wu, Dongying; Paulsen, Ian et al. (April 2, 2004). "Environmental Genome Shotgun Sequencing of the Sargasso Sea".

Science (Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science) 304 (5667): 66–74. doi:10.1126/science.109385 (inactive 2010-05-20). * Rusch, Donald B.; Halpern, Aaron L.; Sutton, Granger; Heidelberg, Karla B.; Williamson, Shannon; Yooseph, Shibu; Wu, Dongying; . . . Venter, J. Craig (March 13, 2007). "The Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling expedition: Northwest Atlantic through Eastern Tropical Pacific". PLoS Biology (Public Library of Science) 5 (3): 398–431. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050077. * Yooseph, Shibu; Sutton, Granger; Rusch, Donald B.; Halpern, Aaron L.; Williamson, Shannon; Remington, Karin; Eisen, Jonathan A.; . . . Venter, J. Craig (March 13, 2007).

"The Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling Expedition: Expanding the Universe of Protein Families". PLoS Biology (Public Library of Science) 5 (3): 432–466. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050016. * Venter, J. Craig (October 18, 2007). A Life Decoded: My Genome: My Life. New York, New York: Viking Adult. ISBN 0670063584. See also References 1. ^ Shreeve, Jamie (October 31, 2005). "The Blueprint Of Life". Retrieved December 6, 2007. 2. ^ Fox, Stuart (May 21, 2010). "J. Craig Venter Institute creates first synthetic life form". Retrieved May 21, 2010. 3. ^ Time. February 4, 2008. "Venter attended Mills High School from Millbrae, CA". 4. ^ 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists, BBC, 21 May 2010. 5.

^ "Craig Venter Takes Aim at the Big Questions". ScienceWatch 8 (5). September/October 1997. Retrieved June 7, 2009. 6. ^ Rae-Venter Law Group 7. ^ a b "The god of small things". The Sydney Morning Herald. January 26, 2007. 8. ^ 9. ^ 10. ^ Wadman, Meredith (May 2007). "High-profile departure ends genome institute's charmed run". Nature Medicine 13 (5): 518. doi:10.1038/nm1594. PMID 17479082. 11. ^ Roberts, Leslie (October 11, 1991). "Genome patent fight erupts: an NIH plan to patent thousands of random DNA sequences will discourage industrial investment and undercut the Genome Project itself, the plan's critics charge.". Science 254 (5029): 184–186. doi:10.1126/science.1925568. 12.

^ "Patent Law—Utility—Federal Circuit holds that expressed sequence tags lack substantial and specific utility unless underlying gene function is identified.—In re Fisher, 421 F.3d 1365 (Fed. Cir. 2005).". Harvard Law Review 119 (8): 2604–2611. 2006. 13. ^ Weber, James L.; Myers, Eugene W. (1997). "Human Whole-Genome Shotgun Sequencing". Genome Research 7 (5): 401–409. doi:10.1101/gr.7.5.401 (inactive 2010-05-20). 14. ^ Green, Philip (1997). "Against a Whole-Genome Shotgun". Genome Research 7 (5): 410–417. doi:10.1101/gr.7.5.410 (inactive 2010-05-20). PMID 9149937. 15.

^ Shreeve, Jamie (October 31, 2005). "The Blueprint of Life". U.S. News and World Report. Retrieved January 30, 2007. 16. ^ "Montgomery County, Maryland Government (December 19, 2000). "Time Magazine Dubs Montgomery County "DNA Alley"". Press release. Retrieved January 30, 2007. 17. ^ Others, J. Craig; Adams, Mark D.; Myers, Eugene W.; Li, Peter W.; Mural, Richard J.; Sutton, Granger G.; Smith, Hamilton O.; Yandell, Mark et al. (2001). "The Sequence of the Human Genome". Science 291 (5507): 1304–1351. doi:10.1126/science.1058040. PMID 11181995. 18. ^ Others, E.S.; Linton, L.M.; Birren, B.; Nusbaum, C.; Zody, M.C.; Baldwin, J.; Devon, K.; Dewar, K.

et al. (2001). "International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium (2001) Initial sequencing and analysis of the human …". Nature 409 (6822): 860–921. doi:10.1038/35057062. PMID 11237011. 19. ^ Olson, M.V. (2002). "The Human Genome Project: A Player's Perspective". Journal of Molecular Biology 319 (4): 931–942. doi:10.1016/S0022-2836(02)00333-9. PMID 12079320. 20. ^ Regalo, Antonio (July 24, 2005). "Maverick biologist at work on next goal: creating life". Seattle Times. 21. ^ "Exxon Sinks $600M Into Algae-Based Biofuels in Major Strategy Shift". NYTimes.com (New York Times). July 14, 2009. 22.

^ Larkman, Kirell (September 7, 2007). "Yacht for Sale: Suited for Sailing, Surfing, and Seaborne Metagenomics". GenomeWeb.com (GenomeWeb News). 23. ^ Shreeve, James. "Craig Venter's Epic Voyage to Redefine the Origin of the Species," Wired, August 2004. Accessed June 7, 2007. 24. ^ "The Journey of the Sorcerer", The Economist, December 4, 2004. 25. ^ First individual person's genome decoded - Cosmos Magazine. September 4, 2007. 26. ^ Geneticists on verge of creating artificial life - Cosmos Magazine. October 8, 2007. 27. ^ Douthat, Ross. "The God of Small Things," The Atlantic, Jan/Feb 2007. 28. ^ Warren, Jessica. April 30: Genome scientist to speak at Commencement, The Daily Free Press, April 28, 2004. Accessed August 2, 2008. 29.

^ Aldhous, Peter (2007). "Interview: DNA's messengers". New Scientist (2626): 57. 30. ^ Aufrett, Sarah. "ASU Celebrates Spring Graduates", ASU Insight, May 11, 2007. Accessed June 7, 2007. 31. ^ "Honorary degrees awarded to Browne, Venter and Rausing", Imperial College, October 24, 2007. Accessed May 21, 2010. 32. ^ a b Levy S, Sutton G, Ng PC, Feuk L, Halpern AL, et al. (2007). "The Diploid Genome Sequence of an Individual Human". PLoS Biology 5 (10): e254. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050254. PMID 17803354. PMC 1964779. 33. ^ TED | Talks | Craig Venter: On the verge of creating synthetic life (video) 34.

^ Brown, M.: "Genomics leader accepts U of A honorary degree", "UofA ExpressNews"; retrieved on June 7, 2009. 35. ^ "The Top 10 Everything Of 2008". Time. November 3, 2008. Retrieved April 30, 2010. 36. ^ Omim - Ear Wax, Wet/Dry 37. ^ Venter, J.C. (2007). A Life Decoded. New York: Viking. ISBN 978-0-670-06358-1. 38. ^ Biologist Venter aims to create life from scratch 39. ^ Highfield, Roger (June 8, 2007). "Man-made microbe 'to create endless biofuel'". The Daily Telegraph (London). Retrieved April 30, 2010. 40. ^ . doi:10.1126/science.1190719 (inactive 2010-05-20). 41.

^ "Scientists Create First Self-Replicating Synthetic Life". 42. ^ Wade, Nicholas (May 20, 2010). "Researchers Say They Created a ‘Synthetic Cell’". The New York Times. 43. ^ "Venter, J. Craig" (restricted access). ISIHighlyCited.com. August 19, 2003. Retrieved October 17, 2009. Further reading * Ewing-Duncan, David (2006). Masterminds: Genius, DNA, and the Quest to Rewrite Life. New York, New York: Harper Perennial. ISBN 9780007161843. * Shreeve, James (2004). The Genome War: How Craig Venter Tried to Capture the Code of Life and Save the World. New York, New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0375406298. * Spufford, Francis (2003). The Backroom Boys: The Secret Return of the British Boffin. London, England: Faber.

ISBN 0571214975. [verification needed] * Sulston, John (2002). The Common Thread: A Story of Science, Politics, Ethics and the Human Genome. Washington, DC, USA: Joseph Henry Press. ISBN 0309084091. External links * The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) * HuRef * Cracking the code to life Media * Craig Venter interview - Wired Science, December 2007 (video) * Radio interview on Philosophy Talk * Video of interview/discussion with Craig Venter by Carl Zimmer on Bloggingheads.tv * Craig Venter: A voyage of DNA, genes and the sea - TED (Technology Entertainment Design) conference (video) * Webcast of Venter talk 'Genomics: From humans to the environment' at The James Martin 21st Century School * The Richard Dimbleby Lecture 2007 - Dr. J. Craig Venter - A DNA Driven World * A short course on synthetic genomics.

Edge Master Class 2009 * Craig Venter: On the Verge of Creating Synthetic Life - TED (Technology Entertainment Design) conference (video) Retrieved from "" Politics, Science and Money. Behind the ‘Artificial Life’ Headlines Politics, Science and Money. Behind the ‘Artificial Life’ Headlines Following the announcement in May this year of the creation of so-called “artificial life” in the laboratory, Neil Bennet looks at some of the scientific, social and political issues raised The newspaper headline writers all agreed. “Craig Venter creates synthetic life form”, the Guardian reported on 20th May 2010. “Synthetic cell is a giant leap for science, and could be bigger still for mankind”, the Independent declared the following day. The Times went with “Scientists create artificial life in the laboratory”, while the Telegraph were a little more troubled, going with “Scientist Craig Venter creates life for first time in laboratory sparking debate about ‘playing god’”. The Scottish nationals got in on the act as well, with “Experts hail breakthrough as first synthetic cell is created” and “Scientists play God: Synthetic cells are given life” from the Herald and the Scotsman respectively.

The tabloids retreaded some old ground with their overtly dramatic accounts, with the Express announcing that “‘Frankenstein’ lab creates life in a test tube”, and the Sun declaring “‘Frankenstein’ doc creates life”. My personal favourite though was the Daily Mail, who, with their apparent desire for their readers live in a constant state of fear, went with “Artificial life: have scientists created a monster?” in the first instance, following it up a few days later with “Artificial life created by Craig Venter - but could it wipe out humanity?” In what is certainly the biggest science story to reach the mainstream media so far this year, the reports that scientist-entrepreneur Craig Venter and his laboratory teams in Rockville, Maryland and San Diego, California have successfully produced “the world’s first artificial life form” have generated a mixed response. Most coverage, following from the promissory discourse of Venter and his colleagues, have hailed it as a crowning achievement of molecular biology and biotechnology, marvelling at the technological opportunities seemingly opening up in front of us: from new medicines to sustainable biofuels, Venter it seems is getting set to save us from all the ills of the world.

Even Edinburgh-based socialist and science-fiction author Ken MacLeod , writing in the pages of the Guardian shortly after the initial reports, couldn’t contain his excitement over the announcement – declaring that “this is a moment in evolution, the origin of a new kingdom: the Synthetica,[…] supplementing nature’s bacteria, eukarya, and archaea”, adding that the possible applications for the new technology “outstrip our imagination”. Others, such as the Canadian environmental organisation Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group) have warned against what they describe as potentially disastrous consequences: linking the new development, and the field of synthetic biology in general, to possible applications in the production of biological weapons, and warning of the – extremely doubtful – scenario in which the novel bacteria created in Venter’s lab (or others that might follow) could pose a risk if they escape from the laboratory or are released into the environment – leading them to call for a moratorium on the entire field. However few of the initial commentators questioned what was meant by “artificial life”, or considered in detail what the researchers had and had not achieved.

Here I will argue that Venter and his team have not created “artificial life” or a “synthetic cell” as many of the reports suggested, and that the confusion that has led to such claims being made is based on a profoundly ideological reductionist perspective that has dominated much of biology, both in practice and in popular discourse. I will proceed to look at how synthetic biology, including ‘Synthia’, as the new bacterium has been dubbed by some, has been shaped in relation to the needs of capitalism, particularly with respect to intellectual property rights (IPRs) and the commodity form. Finally I will put this discussion into the context of a socialist approach to understanding technology, and the social processes shaping scientific research and technological development in general. What is ‘Synthia’? ‘Synthia’, or to call it by its proper name as used in the paper in Science reporting its successful creation, “Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0” (the initials taken from the J. Craig Venter Institute, the somewhat vainly designated not-for-profit wing of Venter’s current research empire) is a novel form of M.

mycoides subspecies capri, a type of parasitic bacterium that is normally more likely to be found causing lung disease in goats. Its creation is the most recent development in the Minimum Genome Project, a major undertaking of JCVI over the past decade and a half, costing an estimated US$40 million and receiving significant funding from the US Department of Energy, as well as backing from various oil/energy companies such as BP and Exxon, together with venture capital investment. Venter was already a controversial figure due to his role in the Human Genome Project (HGP) in the late ‘90s – he and his former company, Celera Genomics, went head-to-head in a race with the publicly-funded US National Institute of Health (NIH)-led project to produce the first draft sequence of the human genome (also supported by the Wellcome Trust in the UK), with Celera originally planning to charge researchers for access to packaged genomic information. The institutional set-up Venter helped pioneer during that period – with a private for-profit company set up to fund a not-for-profit research organisation and acquire any intellectual property generated – has been replicated, with new company Synthetic Genomics backing the work of the JCVI.

In line with the general aims of synthetic biology, Venter and his team had the idea to build a minimal bacterial genome, containing only the essential genes needed to ensure the organism could survive and replicate. In 1995 they sequenced the genome – a genome is the full complement of genes in any living thing – of M. genitalium, a bacterium with the fewest genes of any known organism (it has since been surpassed in this regard with the discovery of a new species of archaea in a hydrothermal vent near Iceland in 2002). They proceeded in a series of experiments to disrupt each of the genes of M. genitalium, showing that a little over 100 of its 485 protein-encoding genes could be surplus to requirement, at least if disrupted one-at-a-time. In May 2007 the JCVI filed for a patent in the US for a minimal bacterial genome, having successfully worked out a method for assembling a synthetic version of the M. genitalium genome made from chemically-synthesised pieces joined together inside a yeast cell.

However for the next stage of the project – attempting to transplant the genome from yeast back into a bacterial cell – the extremely slow growth rate led the researchers to drop M. genitalium in favour of using the related species M. mycoides subspecies capri as donor and M. capricolum subspecies capricolum as recipient. Using the already-known genomic sequence of the M. mycoides subspecies (published genetic and genomic sequences are held on massive online databases for scientists to search and use), overlapping sequences of around 1080 base-pairs (the sequences of A’s, C’s, G’s & T’s that make up genetic code of DNA) were produced commercially and then assembled in stages inside yeast cells. Four of the sequences that were not involved in coding for proteins were made to contain “watermark” sequences, which in a code spell out a website address, the names of some the people involved in the project – including Venter himself – and some famous quotations (“To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life”; “What I cannot build, I cannot understand”; “See things not as they are, but as they might be”).

After resolving a number of technical issues arising from differences in the biology of the organisms used and the imprecision of the procedures, the team eventually managed to synthesise and transfer the genome from a yeast cell into a cell of M. capriocolum which had had its own DNA removed. It was tested and found that the transplant had indeed succeeded, that the M. capricolum cell had been converted into an M. mycoides cell, complete with the extra watermark DNA sequences. DNA is Not Life The story outlined above might come as some surprise to anyone who had simply scanned some of the newspaper headlines about the creation of artificial life in a test tube. While the scientists’ accomplishments are undoubtedly impressive, and have the potential to contribute to both basic research and the development of novel biotechnologies, they have not created “artificial life” nor made a “synthetic cell”. They have succeeded in copying and slightly modifying the genome of a particular species of bacteria, assembling it and successfully transplanting it into the living cell of another closely-related species of bacteria.

This was made possible by significant advances in DNA sequencing and de novo DNA synthesis technologies in the last two decades, meaning procedures which used to take months and years now take days and weeks and are much cheaper to perform. Ken Wolfe, Professor of Genome Evolution at Trinity College Dublin told the Irish Times, “I think [the claims have] been exaggerated. [Venter] has a reputation for showmanship” adding, “he hasn’t created life, he has mimicked life. It is a technical achievement to synthesise a piece of DNA that size…it was an achievement of scale.” As leftist biologist and popular science writer Steven Rose reminded us in the letters page of the Guardian soon after the initial reports, inserting a synthesised strand of DNA into a living cell does not equate to creating artificial or synthetic life. DNA is a dead molecule – it does not function independently of everything else that goes on inside a living cell.

The commonplace description of DNA as “self-replicating” is false and misleading, seemingly endowing DNA with a special power over all living things – leading to such metaphors as that of the “master molecule”, “blueprints” or indeed computer code – the existence of a planned sequence for the synthesised genome in silico before it was produced in the lab was one of the themes in media coverage of the experiment. It is in this sense that Richard Dawkins famously described living organisms as “lumbering robots” whose sole raison d’être is simply to make sure their genes are passed on to the next generation. But DNA is not “self-replicating”. It is copied by a complex set of cellular machinery, and is useless and lifeless without it. As Rose commented: “What [Craig Venter’s team] have emphatically not done is “create life”. DNA is a relatively inert molecule unless placed in the environment provided by a living cell. When biologists learn to create cells from scratch, then and only then will they have created life.” The equating of the creation of functioning DNA with the creation of life has strong ideological roots, particularly in relation to human genetics and evolution.

The mythical power attributed to DNA is part of the modern incarnation of an older biological reductionism that continues to attempt to provide biological explanations for social phenomena, through so-called sociobiology, and more recently evolutionary psychology. [For a more detailed discussion of these issues, see my previous article, Biology and Ideology: the Case against Biological Determinism, Frontline 2(8) (December 2008)]. Being “in the DNA” has in popular discourse come to represent something permanent or unchanging, something fixed that helps define and limit who we are and what we can do. So David Cameron has on various occasions described family values, belief in his country, “Atlanticism” (i.e. propping up US imperialism) and support for Israel as being “in his DNA” and that of his party, with the implication that these are ideological commitments that are not going to change by the time the next election or military adventure comes around. By situating agency in a supposedly immutable molecular realm, the social relations of capitalism can become naturalised through biology. Social problems are reconceptualised as genetic problems, and poverty, inequality and injustice are removed from their social and historical context and given new life as eternal, immutable conditions of human nature.

So for example at the first Human Genome Conference, in October 1989, Daniel Koshland – then editor of the prestigious journal Science – was asked why the vast quantities of money being committed to the Human Genome Project should not be given to the homeless instead. He replied, “what these people don’t realise is that the homeless are impaired…Indeed no group will benefit more from the application of human genetics”. Biology as Engineering Synthetic biology is a relatively new discipline, the term only having been used to describe a distinct field of the life sciences in the last decade. In that time it has established its own journals and academic societies, courses have been created, conferences have been held and departments formed – including a proposed new centre at the University of Edinburgh. There are now even some synthetic biology textbooks appearing, something historian of science Thomas Kuhn considered an important indicator of the maturation of a new scientific discipline. Many have described synthetic biology with reference to another relatively new field within the life sciences, systems biology. Systems biology too only appeared within the last decade, and deals primarily with attempts to use computer models to gain an understanding of complex biological systems.

According to some, it has in part emerged as a reaction to the reductionism of the molecular biology paradigm that has dominated the biological sciences for much of the last half-century, i.e. that it marks at least in part something of a recognition amongst biologists that the exclusive focus on genes as isolated effector molecules cannot alone cannot hope to explain complex biological systems and the different ways in which they interact. Synthetic biology on the other hand can be considered an attempt to work towards the opposite goal – in other words to actively seek to reduce the complexity of biological systems, often in order to put them to use as novel biotechnologies. One commonplace way to depict synthetic biology then has been as the principles of engineering applied to biological and biotechnological systems. Specifically synthetic biology aims to use the engineering principles of functional abstraction (i.e. functions of specific biological or genetic components that can taken out of their original context and put into others), standardisation and modularity (i.e. different biological or genetic “parts” can be swapped about freely to use in different systems) and the intentional, rational design process to produce useful biological systems. In doing so it takes advantage of recent advances in gene sequencing, computation and genetic engineering techniques.

One important aspect of the development of both these two fields is the relationship with systems of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs). Reductionist molecular biology is particularly well-suited to intellectual property regulations: if organisms are perceived of as being determined by their genetic components, which are themselves considered complex chemicals, it is a relatively small step to allowing intellectual property claims over living things to be recognised. Indeed this is essentially what occurred in the landmark Diamond vs Chakrabarty ruling in the US in 1980, where General Electric filed a patent on a genetically-modified bacterium intended to help clean up oil spills. After initially being refused on the grounds that living things could not be patented, an appeal led to the overturning of the decision by a 5-4 vote, the Board of Appeal declaring that “the fact that microorganisms are alive is without legal significance for purposes of the patent law.” The case formed a precedent that allowed living things to become the property of corporations and research institutions. The same year also saw the introduction Bayh-Dole Act in the US, which has since been imitated by other countries around the world, leading to the increased privatisation of scientific research and an increased focus on commercial imperatives in public-funded research.

As historian of technology David F. Noble describes it, “What the Bayh-Dole [Act] said was that the universities automatically now own all patent rights on publicly-funded research. What that meant was that universities were now in the patent-holding business and they could license private industry and in that way give them the rights over the results of the research funded by the taxpayer. It was the biggest give-away in American history.” Systems biology, with its concept of ‘emergent’ phenomena, i.e. the recognition that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” (or, in more materialist terms, that at each [ontological] level new interactions and relationships appear between component parts, which cannot be inferred just by considering the properties of the parts alone) is much more difficult to bring into line with IPR regimes. IPR generally requires entities to be bounded and isolable in order to be recognised as commodities and appropriated. As such the recognition of complexity, interrelatedness and context-dependence in the systems approach has meant that for the most part IPR has been quite limited in scope, usually relating to the computer models used to describe systems rather than biological entities themselves.

Synthetic biology on the other hand is explicit in its emulation of engineering, and so highly conducive to IPR regimes. Some working in the field have self-consciously embraced an open source approach (drawing on the open source movement in computer software), with so-called “BioBrick™ standard biological parts” being subject to open source agreements promoting sharing of such “parts” and the systems they create from putting them together. However others, including Venter, have been working actively to obtain patent rights over their synthetic biology creations and techniques. With respect to the “synthetic cell”, British Nobel Prize-winning biologist John Sulston has suggested that the project has as much to do with ownership of the methods involved in synthesising genomes than with the resulting bacterium itself. Speaking at the Science Museum in London in June, he said the work was “clever and pretty”, but was not artificial life: “What that advance is being used for is an attempt to monopolise, through the patenting system, essentially all the tools for genomic manipulation […] let’s be clear that the tools for manipulating genomes should be in the public domain.

This is not just a philosophical point of view: it’s actually the case that monopolistic control of this kind would be bad for science, bad for consumers and bad for business, because it removes the element of competition.” Sulston also told the BBC: “I’ve read through some of these patents and the claims are very, very broad indeed….I hope very much [that] these patents won’t be accepted because they would bring genetic engineering under the control of the J Craig Venter Institute. They would have a monopoly on a whole range of techniques.” Of Commons and Anti-Commons The situation Suslton describes is what is known as a “tragedy of the anti-commons”, a neologism made in reference to the “tragedy of the commons” – a widely circulated concept originating in a paper of the same name Garrett Hardin in a 1968 edition of Science. In that paper Hardin argued that resources held in common (eg. clean air and water, shared pasture etc.) are necessarily depleted, as each individual using the shared resource acts in self-interest – i.e.

free and unrestricted access to commons by individuals leads to over-exploitation, as the benefits of exploitation accrue to the individuals while the costs are shared by all those to whom the resource is available. In more commonplace economic terms we would refer to these costs as negative externalities. Hardin was a neo-Malthusian and eugenicist primarily concerned with what he considered to be the problem of over-population – similar to the other pillar of neo-Malthusianism and conservative environmentalism Paul Ehrlich, whose book of the same year, The Population Bomb, helped resurrect the anti-poor ideology of Thomas Malthus (Hardin’s second best known paper was called “Lifeboat Ethics: the Case against Helping the Poor” (1974)). This resurrection of Malthus, as Monthly Review editor John Bellamy Foster has argued, marked an effort to give ecology and environmentalism a conservative, pro-capitalist character in contrast to the radicalism of the likes of Rachel Carson.

The “tragedy of the commons” model became for some a justification for enclosing commonly held resources, for the extension of private property in order that resources are “properly managed” – its influence can be clearly seen in attempts to introduce emissions trading schemes in international agreements on climate change, for example (this does not in itself mean such attempts are necessarily without merit, though I will avoid discussing this issue here). The problem here is the confusion over commonly-held resources and uncontrolled, open-access resources, together with the assumption of self-interested behaviour – a hallmark of capitalism made out to be a universal feature of human society. Hardin’s model assumes capitalist social relations in such a way that precludes social planning – in contrast, for example, to Marx’s vision of communal rights and responsibilities with respect to natural resources, as well as the real existence of community-managed resources for millennia in pre-capitalist and still-existing traditional societies. Furthermore by laying the blame at the door of population growth and some apparent human propensity to act in a selfish way, Hardin’s thesis neglects the role of capitalist social relations – and the “treadmill of production” – in causing ecological degradation and depleting natural resources.

It was also completely ahistorical, as radical economist Michael Perleman points out, “With no evidence whatsoever, except for an obscure nineteenth century pamphlet […] Hardin insisted that the absence of property rights in the English common lands inevitably led to an environmental disaster.” Of course such false justifications mask the naked “class robbery” that the enclosures really represented (see E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (1963)). While the “tragedy of the commons” was supposedly meant to describe a breakdown in coordination and management of a resource due to there being “insufficient” claims to ownership rights over it, a “tragedy of the anti-commons” is the opposite – where the existence of too many rights-holders prevents some desirable purpose from being achieved. This more valid idea has been most successfully applied to patents and other forms of intellectual property. If the creation of a new product necessarily uses different techniques or components that are held under patents by private interests, it might become too difficult or expensive to negotiate a licence agreement with all parties.

This means that potential products, even those in great demand (including – though not limited to – those that might fulfil a genuine social need, such as a new medical drugs) may not get produced, as the costs associated with the patents are too high. This is a lose-lose-lose situation economically, as neither the patent-holder, the potential manufacturer, or those who would benefit from the product have gained from the situation caused by the patents. A related situation is the holding of broad or “upstream” patent claims (such as those on genes, or techniques such as those used to culture stem cells) that while they do benefit the patent-holder, who maintains a monopoly covering a large research area, they severely inhibit research and innovation in general by excluding non-patent holders. So for example a study from 2005 found that around one fifth of all the genes in the human genome are currently held under patent. Patent law allows for the ownership of genes that have been isolated from the organism they occur in, the isolation of potentially useful DNA sequences supposedly being closer to an invention than a discovery.

A survey from 2003 of leading laboratory directors in the US found that 53% had “decided not to develop or perform a test/service for clinical or research purposes because of a patent”. This issue came to a head in March this year, when a US judge overturned two of the very few human gene patents which have proved to be profitable for their owners. BRCA1 is a gene associated with breast cancer – the most common type of cancer affecting women. Different people have slightly different forms of the gene, which confer different levels of risk for the cancer, so genetic tests are performed to see which form people have. A US company, Myriad Genetics, rather than holding a patent on the tests, held patents on the gene itself (and a second, related gene) – meaning development of different tests using the BRCA1 gene (including improved tests) have been effectively barred. Meanwhile only Myriad could offer the tests, for which they charge over US$3000, well outside the means of those without adequate health insurance coverage.

The judge in the case – brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Public Patent Foundation and individual patients and medical groups – said that critics consider the idea that isolating a gene should make it patentable “a ‘lawyer’s trick’ that circumvents the prohibition on the direct patenting of the DNA in our bodies but which, in practice, reaches the same result.” Myriad are currently appealing the decision. The “tragedy of the anti-commons” as it has been formulated is limited to showing the failure of the intellectual property rights system for the purposes of capitalist innovation itself, and only applies in some limited cases. However anti-capitalists of course have a broader scope for criticising IPRs as an increasingly important part of the system of private ownership and capital accumulation.

The real tragedy of the anti-commons – that is of the enclosing of intellectual commons by private property – is not just to be found in problems of competing or monopolistic rights-holders blocking new innovations, but far more importantly by restricting access to and potential uses of existing technologies and knowledge, in contributing to the polarisation between rich and poor and expanding social and economic injustice, and in the directing of research and shaping of technologies according to the priorities of capital rather than the basic needs and wants of people. Understanding technology It is a commonplace belief that technology is an autonomous factor in society – that technological change and development occurs because of scientific advance or according to its own internal logic or rationality in order to become better, more efficient or to fulfil a particular universal purpose – that technologies are neutral tools designed simply to extend human abilities, having a one-way impact on social development. However such a view is mistaken, as it neglects to consider the ways in which technologies are shaped by the prevailing social institutions in which they are created. Under capitalism, control of technology and technological design is generally in the hands of capitalist enterprise, with the very narrow goal of the pursuit of profit – together with other societal institutions that work to maintain the political and economic order.

So under capitalism technology can be designed to de-skill and disempower workers in relation to management; to put people out of work; to spy on us; to shape our consumption habits, and to extend the destructive projection of imperialist military power. Even “supposedly beneficial innovations are often overshadowed by dubious side effects, ranging from stress or disease at the individual level to resource-depletion and pollution at the level of the ecosphere” (Wallis, 2004). To illustrate with another example, even in areas with seemingly obvious universal benefits, such as medical technologies (e.g. pharmaceuticals) the contradictions at the heart of capitalism shape the research orientations and technological outcomes. Diseases affecting the world’s poorest people are commonly neglected: note for example the infamous so-called “10-90 divide”, whereby 90% of medical research is done for the potential benefit of just 10% of the world’s population. Many of the medical innovations that do make it to market are designed not to improve public health as an end itself, but to extend the patents held by pharmaceutical companies by slightly modifying existing products.

More “innovation” still in the capitalist sense is seen in the invention and boundary-stretching of disease definitions by pharmaceutical companies (known as “disease-mongering”), in attempts to sell more drugs, including by reframing social problems created by capitalist society as personal, medical issues to be treated with chemicals. This is certainly not to dismiss the innovation taking place under capitalism altogether, or to ignore the real advances of medical science (and certainly not to lend support to any of the various so-called “alternative medicines”). Rather my intention is simply to note with Wallis (2004), that for anti-capitalists “innovation” should not be considered an end in itself, and that different technological formations can be judged according to how they have been shaped by the priorities of capitalism. As Wallis points out: “It is important not to lose sight of the long-term duality between the capitalist aspect and the human aspect of everything that goes on in capitalist society. This duality parallels and in part reflects the distinction drawn by Marx between use-value and exchange-value.

Use-value, because it does not readily lend itself to quantitative measurement, was often slighted in political debate (even by socialists), but it has pursued a kind of suppressed existence which is coming back to our attention now that its classic embodiments – air, water, soil, species-diversity – are increasingly threatened. With regard to innovation, the use-value dimension serves to remind us that there is an ongoing basis for creative activity that exists and flourishes despite capitalism and not because of it. This is important in terms of our recognition that while innovation is not necessarily good, it may well be good in some instances.

What we can then suggest is that the basis for distinguishing negative from positive innovations is precisely the degree to which they are – or are not – shaped by the priorities of capital.” (Wallis, 2004) ‘Synthia’ in context With respect to synthetic biology, while we can recognise the ways in which the research agenda and scientific outcomes are being shaped with respect to IPRs – and can be critical of the impacts this might have, as part of a broader critique of IPRs as part of the functioning of present-day monopoly capitalism – this does not imply that any novel technologies produced will necessarily be determined solely by the priorities of capital, that they might not also have an inherent use-value. Nor does it make sense to consider synthetic biology as if it were a single technology, rather than a broad and diverse techno-scientific enterprise still in its relative infancy.

In many ways then it is understandable that Ken MacLeod, as a science fiction writer with a background in biology and computer science, should be excited by the prospects of an “organism…that got its genome not from the direct replication of another organism’s, but from a description of another organism’s, stored in a computer”, and his targets of clerics and ethicists warning about scientists “playing God”, and New Age supporters of vitalism (the belief that there’s some magical quality about living things that distinguishes them from the inorganic world) are well deserving, if not exactly socially powerful forces worthy of critique. However it is important not to lend uncritical support to any novel innovations derived from altering the genetic make-up of living things without considering the social, economic and political implications – a lesson well-known to peasant activists in the Global South fighting against genetically-modified crops that threaten their livelihoods and wrest control of part of the agricultural process from producers.

In this respect it is important to note the political-economic context of Venter’s current research programme, the main claims for which have been in the areas of medicine and vaccine production, and in the theoretical possibility of developing genetically engineered microorganisms capable of being put to use in the efficient production of liquid biofuels and other energy-generation projects. On the former, it remains to be seen whether genome-engineering techniques will prove useful in the near future: as Paul Nurse, Nobel Prize-winning British geneticist told the BBC, we already have systems for producing biological molecules in microorganisms that are far cheaper and more straightforward to use. More importantly, the development of energy-producing microorganisms is being promoted as a major potential techno-fix solution for the crises of climate change and declining energy reserves. This is the major reason for the substantial backing the work has received from the Department of Energy and the big oil companies. However the narrow technology-led response of the US government and big business to the issue of climate change is a dangerous one, illustrating the desperation of the rich and powerful to find a technical ‘magic bullet’ solution that can be adopted without any major social upheaval or changes to the capitalist system of production and consumption.

Liquid biofuels and other such technologies are all the more favoured by this approach, as if they were successful they could have the potential to rescue the automobile industry and the private transportation system, i.e. the hope is that a technology might be created that could preserve the lifestyles of the rich in the developed world. However they remain fantasy solutions and it could well prove impossible to replace the massive quantities of energy derived from fossil fuels with ambient energy from living things. In the meantime the promotion and adoption of already-existing biofuels – based on agricultural products like corn, palm oil, sugar cane and soybeans, and renamed agrofuels by critics – has had a devastating impact on the world’s poor, contributing significantly to the food price crisis of 2007-8, while doing little if anything to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions. The belief that a technological magic bullet – whether from synthetic biology or elsewhere – will appear as a dues ex machina is perfectively representative of the techno-optimism of the capitalist response to climate change.

By putting blind faith in science and technology to come up with a solution, those in power can avoid committing to policies that will come into conflict with the prevailing market orthodoxy, and that seriously address the issue of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to prevent environmental catastrophe. While those in power look to the likes of Venter to save the planet, we should instead look to ourselves to help build the worldwide movement for ecological and social justice. Frontline. An independent Marxist review from Scotland.

Question: What nickname was given to the artificial life form created in 2010 by US biologist Craig Venter?
Answer: Synthia