Biotech industry set to blossom, but need to address concerns

12.45 pm - By NEIL SANDERSON

Biotechnology can flourish anywhere there is the capital to support it - but researchers need to collaborate and address public uneasiness about their work, says the leader of the first team to map the human genome.

Dr Craig Venter, president and chief scientific officer of Celera Genomics Corporation, was speaking to the Catching the Knowledge Wave conference this morning via video link from the United States.

He said that although biotechnology research has been largely limited to the United States and western Europe, the arrival of the internet has made it possible for researchers around the world to participate.

He said there is no reason, other than the lack of capital investment, for biotechnology not to flourish everywhere.

But he said "great science and great discoveries" need multidisciplinary teams.

"I've been in academic institutions, I've worked in the federal government, (and) I started my own not-for-profit research institute which is absolutely thriving with close to $200 million endowment."

Celera, founded just three years ago, is the first for-profit company with which he has been associated.

"Great science and great discoveries can be made in all those different environments."

But he said scientists in general were hampered by working in isolation and in competition with the people in the next lab, on the next floor, or in the next building.

"I think it's the nature of science, and science funding and opportunities."

At Celera there are no traditional departments and researchers do not have their own labs.

"We have engineers, molecular biologists, computer scientists, computer engineers, software engineers, physicists, biochemists all working together on different aspects of the same problem.

"The structure of academic institutions discourages those interactions and 'cooportunities' so I had to leave those institutions to form a new environment that encouraged that cooperation."

Dr Venter also said biotechnology researchers needed to better explain their work to the public.

"I think people confuse some of the ethical issues of biotechnology with genetic engineering. Most of what's done in biology and biotechnology is understanding knowledge, developing new treatments, new therapies, new diagnoses. And, in the case of agriculture, most of the efforts are in terms of selection, not actual genetic engineering.

"An important part of the future of biotechnology and this biological information revolution that we're in is increasing the public education about science and biology, and not letting people's fantasies and the great stories that reach the press drive our view of things."

He said biotechnology was not just about biology and medicine. It was also essential to agriculture, including forestry, and had the potential to improve the environment and increase energy production.

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