Gene Sequencing
A Dispassionate Look at Gene Patenting
31/08/10 14:50 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Duke Law School professor James Boyle argued that gene patents are necessary to spur biotech growth, and that opponents of gene patenting are arguing from a "moral" point of view, "protesting the hubris and in some eyes, heresy, of claiming to own the human genome." S. Pelech comments that it is rather late to get worked up about patenting genes, especially since the vast majority of gene sequence information has been generated at public expense. However, he also believes that the public funding of the human genome project may well have hurt the viability of many biotech companies and the industry, and this has delayed the translation of genomic information into practical applications. Read More...
The State of Sequencing
05/03/12 14:02 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Art Wuster at Seqonomics wrote that the state of DNA sequencing capability in Japan is surprisingly low, espcially when compared to the Netherlands or in Spain, both of which spend only a fraction of what Japan does on research and development. S. Pelech comments that there is already a tsunami of DNA sequence data to go around today that could keep researchers busy for many years to come. He suspects that the Japanese are probably strategically inclined to be more translational and pragmatic in their research and exploit what is already been harvested. Read More...
Learn a Lesson from the Past
03/04/12 12:31 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Ed Yong at Nature News cautioned that while sequencing the human microbiome could lead to exciting and important discoveries for human health, researchers working with the microbiome should avoid overhyping their work so that it does not suffer the same backlash as the Human Genome Project. S. Pelech comments that defining what is meant by the human microbiome "sequence" is even more elusive than the relatively static human genome "sequence" even if this is only from one person out of 7 billion on this planet. He argues that what we really need to do is to identify the specific bacteria that are problematic and cause disease, and differentiate them from the vast majority that are benign or even essential to human health. Read More...