By EUGENE BINGHAM
Geneticists call it "junk DNA", but it could be a goldmine.
Scientifically, these tiny fragments have already been a key tool helping researchers to make significant breakthroughs. Now an Australian company with a New Zealand founder is mining the commercial benefits.
Genetic Technologies (GTG), based in Melbourne, was in New Zealand last week seeking to enforce its patents over testing parts of the DNA chain known as the non-coding or "junk" DNA.
Despite the unflattering label, non-coding DNA has become an important tool to unlock genetic secrets in humans, plants and animals.
GTG says it wants to develop research in New Zealand, protect its commercial rights, and stop laboratories acting illegally.
But some scientists fear the company's moves will restrict research and limit people's access to genetic testing for inherited conditions.
Peter Browett, a professor of pathology at Auckland University, says the issue will have a serious impact on future genetic testing.
He is uncomfortable about GTG's moves, and those of other companies patenting DNA sequences.
"A DNA sequence is a discovery but it's not novel - six billion of us in the world have all got DNA so why should someone be able to have a patent over a particular DNA sequence?" he says.
The Ministry of Health says the patents have "cost implications" for the health sector, but declined to comment further because of negotiations with GTG.
A HortResearch business development leader, Gavin Ross, says the GTG patents could affect a range of its work, and an AgResearch manager says it is also investigating the issue.
GTG's executive chairman, Mervyn Jacobson, says the company is interested in helping research, not hindering it.
But if organisations are using its patented techniques, they should expect to pay.
GTG offers two types of licences: researchers pay a token fee if they want to use the techniques, but if organisations are using the methods commercially, then other rates apply.
Some of the licences offered to researchers cost as little as $1000, says Dr Jacobson.
"Our role is to lead the way in developing new genetic technologies and tests.
"Of course there will be a cost, but our driving objective is to bring new technologies to the market, hopefully to save lives.
"We have a method for getting more information [that is] hidden within the very confusing part of the DNA."
The patents at issue are the result of work by New Zealand immunologist Malcolm Simons, who co-founded the company with Dr Jacobson.
Dr Simons, who remains a GTG consultant although he is seriously ill with bone-marrow cancer, spent much of his career concentrating on junk DNA.
The DNA chain includes genes - which are called the coding part of the chain because they contain the plans to make the proteins - and the non-coding or junk DNA in between (and sometimes within the genes as well).
"It's a bit like a kebab with pieces of meat and vegetable, with spacers in between that are non-edible," says Professor Browett.
"The key part is that both the genes and the junk DNA are inherited from our parents."
Doctors look for patterns within the slight variations that occur in the non-coding sequences for clues to help them identify genetically inherited disorders.
Professor Browett, a spokesman on the issue for the NZ committee of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia, says geneticists have used markers to track genes and genetic diseases for decades, "hence the discovery is not novel. Our view is that the patent needs to be challenged."
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