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Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]

supremecourt.gov

161–170 of 174 posts

Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]

#161
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"almost certainly vanishingly rare event" * "incredibly high rate of reproduction of viruses" = almost certainty. See the first 4 chapters of "Biology of Cancer" by Weinberg.

molecular biology can deal with probabilities that are lower than 1/the number of particles in the universe.

again, have you read "The Biology of Cancer", by Weinberg? There is strong evidence for what I'm saying.

Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]

#162
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

molecular biology can deal with probabilities that are lower than 1/the number of particles in the universe.

again, have you read "The Biology of Cancer", by Weinberg? There is strong evidence for what I'm saying.

Further, I'm not sure what the relationship of probabilities to the number of particles in the universe is. The probability of any given sequence emitted by hmmer as the "highest probability" is tiny (often 10e-50 or better, and for very good matches, 10e-138). So what's your point?

Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]

#163
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

molecular biology can deal with probabilities that are lower than 1/the number of particles in the universe.

again, have you read "The Biology of Cancer", by Weinberg? There is strong evidence for what I'm saying.

uhm, no? But do you understand the thermodynamics of base pair mismatching in DNA/RNA duplexes and how to convert the kcal/mol into probabilities?

Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your perspective is confusing. You say that a modified form of thiostrepton should not be patentable, even though the patent protects the molecule as well as the process of chemical synthesis or purification, which often requires significant innovation, and in this case the natural molecule is also significantly modified. On the other hand, when you PCR something you are generating a dsDNA molecule that is identical…

Yeah, i'm against patents, but i think if we have them they should be applied fairly and according to a clear set of rules instead. It's like saying, I'm opposed to government being involved in marriage, but if we are going to have it then homosexuals should be allowed to be married. The only reason why the perspective seems confusing is because you're conflating process with molecules. In general any given claim of…

addendum:

I am happy with the SCOTUS decision though from a pragmatic point of view, because there is a prokaryotic gene I'd like to "steal", that's under patent application right now of course prokaryotic genes have no introns, so I just got a field day on it.

Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]

#165
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

again, have you read "The Biology of Cancer", by Weinberg? There is strong evidence for what I'm saying.

uhm, no? But do you understand the thermodynamics of base pair mismatching in DNA/RNA duplexes and how to convert the kcal/mol into probabilities?

Sure, please see my papers on that subject.

the work is mostly on okazaki fragments, but a major conclusion from my phd thesis was that B-RNA is stuck because of a very low probability event (the breaking of a large number of hbonds simultaneously).

http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl...

http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl...

http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl...

http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl...

Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]

#166
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uhm, no? But do you understand the thermodynamics of base pair mismatching in DNA/RNA duplexes and how to convert the kcal/mol into probabilities?

Sure, please see my papers on that subject. the work is mostly on okazaki fragments, but a major conclusion from my phd thesis was that B-RNA is stuck because of a very low probability event (the breaking of a large number of hbonds simultaneously). http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl... http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl... http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_o…

Fine, then, a DNA-RNA base pair mismatch incurs approximately 1.5 kcal/mol penalty, which is a 1:10 less likelihood of matching. 3' UTRs of genes are what you need to reverse transcribe (by accident) the mRNA of interest to generate the cDNA you describe. On average they are around 700 bp, the odds of finding an exact match are about 700/4^18 - then a one bp mismatch is 700/4^17 times a 1:10 hit in terms of competitive binding. Two bp mismatch is 700/4^16 times 1:100. Then you have to consider that it's evolutionarily unlikely to have segments that exactly or inexactly match tRNAs because the resulting dsRNA is likely to engage in silencing via the DROSHA mechanism - probably because our bodies like to guess what - get rid of ssRNA viruses. So these numbers are probably at least on the order of 1:10 or even 1:100 or more in the wrong direction.

Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]

#167

While its not a complete win I think this is an ok compromise. Clearly Myriad is going to be impacted as other people come up with ways to test for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes without infringing on their process, and it will make screening for these genes much less expensive. But it leaves open the question of "infringement" on cDNA when you aren't party to the creation. Specifically the guys who have GMO Wheat growing…

I do not see how there is any cDNA involved in a plant that has modified genes. Are you assuming that the plant is infected with a retrovirus? A genome with a modified gene is not cDNA, and I'm not sure how to parse your comment so I'm basically trying to see if there was an error in your comment or an error in my reading of it.

If you read the opinion that this thread links, you will see that Supreme court defines 'cDNA' as 'not naturally occurring'. In Monsanto's case, they inserted genes into crops to make them resistant to one of their own herbicides. That crosses the threshold of 'not naturally occurring' and then becomes cDNA in the context of this ruling.

Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]

#168
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, please see my papers on that subject. the work is mostly on okazaki fragments, but a major conclusion from my phd thesis was that B-RNA is stuck because of a very low probability event (the breaking of a large number of hbonds simultaneously). http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl... http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl... http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_o…

Fine, then, a DNA-RNA base pair mismatch incurs approximately 1.5 kcal/mol penalty, which is a 1:10 less likelihood of matching. 3' UTRs of genes are what you need to reverse transcribe (by accident) the mRNA of interest to generate the cDNA you describe. On average they are around 700 bp, the odds of finding an exact match are about 700/4^18 - then a one bp mismatch is 700/4^17 times a 1:10 hit in terms of competiti…

and yet, existence proofs demonstrate you are wrong. Again, re-read the section on virus tumor oncogenes in The Biology of Cancer; pretty much everythign we know about oncogenes came from this physical mechanism.

Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]

#169
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cDNA occurs in nature (reverse transcriptase). In fact DNA intermediates with introns spliced can be reintegrated into the genome. Further, faulty viruses can acquire oncogenes (intron-splicted, mtuated versions of growth factors, like EGF and HER2/neu) and transfer them to other cells via cDNA intermediates. It's not hard to believe that nature has in fact passed BRCA cDNAs around via retroviral intermediates.

RT doesn't work that way, it requires a specific site near its target gene in order to make the DNA strand. There is off-target activity, but it is almost certainly vanishingly rare.

anyway, if you're really so hung up on this, let's drop the viral intermediate and focus just on pseudogenes (instead of viral retropseudogenes), which are exactly the thing I described in my first comment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudogene#Processed

so, if you want to demonstrate your claim, you would need to write a script that showed that there was no pseudogene that ever inserted at a nonspecific site. You can't show that. ergo, my proposal is more likely than yours. Further, it's support by evidence- for example, the genome is studded with p53 pseudogenes that reintegrated from cDNA nonspecifically.

Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]

#170
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine, then, a DNA-RNA base pair mismatch incurs approximately 1.5 kcal/mol penalty, which is a 1:10 less likelihood of matching. 3' UTRs of genes are what you need to reverse transcribe (by accident) the mRNA of interest to generate the cDNA you describe. On average they are around 700 bp, the odds of finding an exact match are about 700/4^18 - then a one bp mismatch is 700/4^17 times a 1:10 hit in terms of competiti…

and yet, existence proofs demonstrate you are wrong. Again, re-read the section on virus tumor oncogenes in The Biology of Cancer; pretty much everythign we know about oncogenes came from this physical mechanism.

what? Most oncogene duplication comes from chromosomal abnormalities, or occasionally retrotransposon capture. Completely different mechanism from reverse transcriptase amplification. Occasionally retroviruses will incorporate themselves near or inside an oncogene and activate (and sometimes copy them) but again, that is not the same mechanism as nonspecific gene duplication, and will almost certainly not produce the same molecular product as a cDNA.

Remember, the patent is a MOLECULE patent, not a PROCESS patent.

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