The vents weren’t discovered until the late 1970s, when scientists lowered instruments to the seafloor and saw water spilling out at temperatures that ought to have sterilized everything nearby. Rather, life had gathered there. tube worms as long as an adult man. In complete darkness, under crushing pressure, thick mats of bacteria feed on sulfur and hydrogen rather than sunlight. It changed scientists’ perceptions of what life could endure. The fact that these same organisms, which were designed to withstand environments that would destroy regular cells, were chemically valuable in ways that corporations would eventually compete over was something that hardly anyone took into account at the time.
That battle is now well under way and largely hidden from the public. More than 92,000 protein-coding sequences linked to almost 4,800 patents were found in a recent database of marine genes cited in patent filings, and the pattern within that data is difficult to overlook. Sequences from 949 species—more than half of all marine species with identifiable origins—were accounted for by just three companies: BASF, IFF, and DuPont. Deep-sea life was mentioned in all ten of the top patent holders’ filings. Sitting beneath two miles of frigid water, these are organisms that perhaps a few dozen humans have ever physically sampled. Despite this, legal documents claiming fragments of their genetic material continue to pile up in offices across Europe and North America.
The science seems to have outpaced the regulations, as is typically the case in these situations. Gregory Dick’s team at the University of Michigan was pursuing a biological mystery when they collected DNA from microbes close to vents in the Western Pacific and the Gulf of California, sampling at depths greater than 6,000 feet where the water exits the chimneys at temperatures above 500 degrees Fahrenheit. They sought to comprehend how viruses there take control of SUP05, a sulfur-eating bacterium, and make it burn its own reserves in order for the virus to replicate. One of the researchers described it as pirates boarding a treasure ship. The metaphor proved to be more appropriate than he most likely had in mind.
since the loot is genuine. Since 2011, sales of marine-derived drugs have exceeded $1 billion annually, and their success rate in drug development is two to four times higher than that of compounds derived from land organisms. Industries that conduct hot reactions greatly value enzymes that continue to function at boiling temperatures. Therefore, it is not sentiment when a business files a patent after sequencing a gene from a vent microbe. It’s a wager that something on the verge of extinction has a useful chemical trick.
Jurisdiction is the awkward part. The legal no-man’s-land that scientists refer to as areas beyond national jurisdiction is where the majority of these vents are located. Who is the owner of a gene discovered there? To be honest, it’s still unclear. The recent High Seas Treaty attempted to address the distribution of benefits from marine genetic resources, but it mainly ignored the intellectual property issues that determine who makes money. The value is discreetly pooling in that gap.
The imbalance is difficult to ignore. A few affluent companies, well-funded research facilities, and the appropriate sequencing tools. Everyone else is observing from the coast. For hundreds of millions of years, the microbes themselves have been performing this chemistry, unconcerned with any of it, glowing dimly in water that would instantly kill us.
The thing that sticks with me as I watch this happen isn’t exactly outrage. There’s a sense of unease regarding precedent. We are determining the economics of a location we cannot yet visit without a submarine and significant financial resources, and we are writing the ownership rules for an ecosystem we hardly comprehend. The businesses appear to think that the value is clear enough to lock down now and take legal action later. Perhaps they are correct. However, the deep ocean has previously taken us by surprise, and it’s possible that the most significant thing down there is something that the patent office hasn’t yet considered claiming.
