"However, purification of the DNA is usually enough to render it patentable."
Could you explain a little more about what this means? DNA in its natural state is impure?
Could you explain a little more about what this means? DNA in its natural state is impure?
The DNA for a specific naturally occuring gene is only a tiny portion of the total DNA extracted from a cell.
Since 1990 or so, purification of this (relatively) small piece of DNA for a particular gene (from the enormous quantity of genomic DNA) has become pretty trivial in most cases. This is largely due to the invention of the Polymerase Chain Reaction [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCR] and the maturation of gene cloning techniques.
Yeah, it's ludicrous - imagine that I tried to file for a patent on using a random (but useful!) phrase in English on the basis that I was able to write a Perl regex to pull it out of a web page.
And I won't even qualify that with the usual "poor analogy" disclaimer - it's almost exactly what the current law allows for, just replace "random phrase in English" with "snippet of DNA", and "Perl regex" with "biochemical reaction".