www.checkbiotech.org ; www.raupp.info ; www.czu.cz

Computer software is amenable for duplication, modification, and improvement
and therefore has greater utility and value ? DNA as well. Sharing software
freely has enabled the open-source movement and has led to numerous
innovations in operating systems and products. What about open-sourcing
DNA?is that the key to agricultural innovation and feeding an ever-growing
population? December 2005 by C. Neal Stewart, Jr.

One person who thinks so is Richard Jefferson, of GUS reporter gene fame,
who is the director of CAMBIA (http://www.cambia.org) and its new offshoot,
BiOS (Biological Innovation for Open Society,
[www.bios.net]). BiOS and other organizations such as
PIPRA (Public Intellectual Property Resource for Agriculture;
[www.pipra.org]) are promoting open access to biological innovations
targeted to agricultural improvement, especially for crops most important to
the developing world.

Currently there are relatively few companies, located mainly (about 75%) in
the private sector,1 that hold patents on crucial agricultural
biotechnologies; however, Jefferson believes those few companies could be
using those patents to "dominate then destroy an industry." Alternatively,
he is advocating parallel engineering?that is, the creation of redundant
inventions to endow freedom to operate.2 A perfect example of this is the
TransBacter system?the ?new Agro'3?in which bacteria other than
Agrobacterium tumefaciens were shown to transfer DNA stably into plant
genomes. Indeed, CAMBIA is providing free access to Sinorhizobium meliloti,
Mesorhizobium loti, and Rhizobium sp. NGR234 as Agrobacterium alternatives.
Much work remains to increase the transformation efficiency provided by
these bacteria, but the research is seminal. CAMBIA allows researchers to
use these bacteria for free in non-profit and for-profit research and
product development; but, in return, the recipient must pledge to make any
subsequent improvements freely accessible to others.

Typically when a company makes an invention, it files for a patent and does
not freely share the invention?whether it be a promoter, gene,
transformation tool, or any other enabling technology. Companies do not
share because a patent will allow them to recoup any investment they have
made on the invention, as well as secure an exclusive use of the technology
for 20 years, when the patent runs out. Of course, they might elect to
license the technology to other parties, as DuPont does for
biolistic-mediated plant transformation, if it appears that the licensee
will not be a direct competitor. Herein lies the difference: status quo is
protective and open source is disseminative. The former rests on free market
economic forces, while the latter is dependent on altruism and the future
gambit that participants will benefit from collective access to
improvements.

The poster child for open-source agriculture is 'Golden Rice', which is
engineered to contain elevated provitamin A content.4&5 The researchers'
intentions were to make this rice seed freely available to farmers in the
developing world to combat dietary vitamin A deficiency and the childhood
blindness that often results. To do so, they literally sweet-talked and
shamed patent holders into allowing the technologies, which were restricted
by myriad intellectual property rights, to be available, and so enabled a
path for Golden Rice to be marketed. Someone looking at the development of
Golden Rice might ask the obvious question: if patent holders do not make
agricultural biotechnology tools freely accessible, how do researchers like
those working on golden rice get them in the first place? The answer is that
companies often do make these tools freely accessible for research in a
roundabout way. All plant biotechnology researchers have disarmed
Agrobacterium, the 35S promoter, and the nptII antibiotic resistance gene in
their labs and use them for plant transformation research. These tools get
passed around informally from group to group, with the patent holders opting
not to block this type of non-profit research. However, it is when the
technologies are used in commercial products that patent holders make a
stink. Open-source would be more fragrant in that regard.

The question then becomes, would open-source really be effective in
facilitating commercialization and technology transfer that could help the
poorer farmers of the world? There is no simple answer. Perhaps smaller
companies would benefit from open-source biotechnology, because they could
then have a chance to play. However, substantial federal and state
regulations for products of agricultural biotechnology pose significant
barriers for all but the largest of companies. Simply put, many companies
wishing to sell transgenic seed will not likely have the millions of dollars
needed to meet current regulatory requirements. Regardless whether products
were intended for cultivation in the U.S. or Pakistan, for example, the
initial regulatory costs might easily outweigh the intellectual property
costs. We can hope, however, that regulatory hurdles will eventually be
relaxed, as biosafety concerns are assuaged by time and track records?at
least for agronomic traits that are becoming very familiar stories in
agricultural biotechnology. Value added and output traits might not see
regulatory slack for decades. Still, for certain traits and crops,
open-source and open-access agriculture has merit.

PIPRA is comprised of a consortium of non-profit research groups?mostly
located at land grant universities?committed to making "agricultural
technologies more easily available for development and distribution of
subsistence crops for humanitarian purposes in the developing world and
specialty crops in the developed world" (http://www.pipra.org). Thus, the
PIPRA model can be distinguished from open-source: PIPRA seeks to
collaborate with member institutions on intellectual property policy,
organize a public-sector intellectual property database, and develop shared
technology packages.6 PIPRA has positioned itself to work with university
technology offices to walk the tightrope between optimal commercial return
and optimal humanitarian benefit. Whereas open-source is focused on
cumulative improvements, PIPRA seeks to package public sector-derived
technologies to support innovation in crops grown in developing countries.

In addition to regulatory hurdles and organizational constraints, there is a
dearth of public science that can enable agricultural innovation relevant to
the poorer farmers of the world. Even if the TransBacter system is not
proved to infringe on broad patents, there are other crucial pieces of
science and technology needed to commercialize transgenic plants. For
example, genes of interest, promoters, and marker genes are all needed to
provide a complete package for freedom-to-operate scenarios. And then there
are other technologies that might be useful on the regulatory end, such as
recombination tools that could deliver transgenic plants enabled to contain
their transgenes in space and time.

Solving these problems starts and ends with funding, since there is little
else to limit the willing and able plant scientists with records of
innovation. Other than a few foundations to support biotechnology for
developing countries and the meager public funding in the developing
countries themselves, there is little interest in funding the research
needed to make a real difference. The plant ABC transporter that confers
kanamycin resistance to transgenic plants7 was discovered serendipitously en
route to completing a project funded by the U.S. Army. I personally would
much rather work for explicit humanitarian purposes at the onset of a
project. Indeed, a concerted effort to discover other selectable markers and
promoters is needed, along with deep pockets for funding. The same is true
for gene containment technologies. Indeed, commensurate with funding, it
would be desirable to guarantee that research would be available for
open-source or open-access platforms before discoveries are made. A few
researchers are already engaged in this paradigm. PIPRA is involved in the
production of a plant transformation vector, with components obtained from
the public domain and its member institutions, which is intended for
royalty-free use for humanitarian purposes.

Whether the CAMBIA/BiOS, PIPRA, or some other organization ultimately
succeeds in facilitating increased access to the biotechnological tools of
agricultural science, the beginning of the 21st century should be noted for
initiating these important steps toward agricultural equity between North
and South. Who knows what will eventually work, but matters as weighty as
political instability, mass starvation, and world economic depression could
weigh in the balance of the eventual outcome.

Acknowledgement. Thanks to Sara Boettiger for reviewing and discussing an
earlier version of this article.

References

1. Graff G D et al. (2003) The public-private structure of intellectual
property ownership in agricultural biotechnology. Nat Biotechnol 21, 989-995

2. Herrera S (2005) Profile: Richard Jefferson. Nat Biotechnol 23, 643

3. Broothaearts et al. (2005) Gene transfer to plants by diverse species of
bacteria. Nature 433, 629-633

4. Ye X et al. (2000) Engineering provitamin A (b-carotene) biosynthetic
pathway into (carotenoid-free) rice endosperm. Science 287, 303-305

5. Potrykus I (2001) Golden rice and beyond. Plant Physiol 125, 1157-1161

6. Atkinson R C et al (2003) Public sector collaboration for agricultural IP
management. Science 301, 174-175

7. Mentewab A & Stewart C N Jr. (2005) Overexpression of an Arabidopsis
thaliana ABC transporter confers kanamycin resistance to transgenic plants.
Nat Biotechnol 23, 1177-1180

[www.isb.vt.edu]

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