Huge chunk of our genome is set to be privatised

摘要

As much as an eighth of the human genome could be patented in one go. Last week British company Oxford GlycoSciences announced that it had filed for patents on 4000 human proteins and the genes that code for them. They're all proteins linked with illness, spotted by comparing healthy and diseased tissue. "We think it's the biggest group of disease-specific proteins anyone's ever filed for," says Michael Kranda, chief executive officer at OGS. The entire human genome only contains an estimated 30,000 genes.