July 2005 Archives

(UPDATE, 22 November 05: Wired Magazine has now published a version of this map.)

Given recent discussions in the press and at the NSABB meeting concerning licensing DNA synthesis instruments and related professional skills, it seems like a good idea to make an estimate of how big the problem is by assessing the distribution of the technology.  Prompted by Jerry Epstein at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, I headed out on the web to make a list of Commercial DNA Foundries.  Here is a map we came up with to represent access to commercially synthesized oligos.

(UPDATE, 19 July 05: I've replaced the .gif with a higher resolution .jpg.)  (UPDATE: Note that these are Foundries -- that is, the building where DNA actually gets synthesized -- and that the associated distribution/marketing networks are actually considerably more widespread.)

This is just a first pass, though given how many companies there are I don't know if we will spend a lot of time trying to be encyclopedic.  A few notes:  there are no academic foundries on here, save the Zelinsky Institute in Moscow (which I included because it is quite interesting that a government facility in Russia is operating commercially -- fascinating implications for proliferation).  The number of academic foundries suggests that both instrumentation and skills are quite widely distributed.  The companies are numerous enough.  I gave up trying to fit more companies into the maps of US and Western Europe -- if I left out your company, my apologies.  Perhaps if we figure out a more clever way to keep track of, and represent, all the data, we can include all comers.  I suspect there are more companies in Russian and China, but the language barrier defeats my first pass with Google.

So now, a couple of thoughts.  The net capacity of all these foundries looks to be pretty impressive (though I have yet to add it all up).  Who is ordering all this DNA?  The estimates I've heard for the size of the synthesis market are in the low tens of millions of dollars annually.  Either many companies are ekeing out existence on wee small pieces of the total, or the market is much bigger than people think.  How is it split between short oligos, perhaps primarily used as PCR primers, and larger constructs used to build genes for recombinant proteins?  Does it make a difference, even now?  If so, given the increasing capability demonstrated in assembling short pieces of DNA, is it worth trying to distinguish between short and long oligos?  That is, will regulation of either short or long pieces of DNA be feasible and will it increase security?

Finally, I haven't yet charted the cost per base of synthesis as a function of geography, but I'm sure the results will be provocative.  I was surprised to see that the biotechnology industry in India is supporting at least three commercial synthesis foundries, and I'll bet those companies are charging less than I recently paid for gene synthesis domestically.  How soon are North American and European DNA foundries going to have to compete against Indian labor and FedEx?

More to come as I ponder this.  Comments and suggestions?

The 24 June issue of Science contains a story (subscription required) by Richard Stone describing efforts to build up biotech in Kazakhstan.  They aren't thinking small; "The government has approved plans and is now reviewing financing for a $50 million Life Science and Biotech Center of Excellence, supported in part by the World Bank."

I think this is interesting for a couple of reasons.  The first is that the article describes U.S. Department of State hopes that the endeavor will keep former bioweapons scientists engaged in less threatening activities.  The second is that the World Bank is helping finance what could be at minimum a regional biotech power.  Given a few years to build up the infrastructure, combined with the expertise developed at Stepnogorsk in manipulating and manufacturing biologicals, they could be a global technological and economic power.

I finally got around to reading Bruce Sterling's essay, "Can Technology Save the Planet?," in the latest Sierra.  Also covered at WorldChanging (which has a link to a PDF).  Well done, Bruce. 

I recommend everyone have a read, and then ponder it quietly for a while.

Donald Kennedy's latest editorial in Science notes that the vast majority of NIH grants are going to older investigators.  Writes Kennedy;

In 1980, despite a tightened academic job market..."new" investigators held 50% of competing new grants, and 23% of all awards were going to scientists under 35. Now, alas, that percentage has shrunk to less than 4%, with a huge corresponding increase in the proportion going to older researchers.

This despite the fact that the NIH budget has at least doubled since 1980.  (The figure is from an interesting article on how to fund science and innovation by Kei Koizumi for the AAAS.)  A rough Google search suggests 80% of PhD's in the US are held by people under 40 (does anybody have good numbers for biology?), which means that the vast majority of NIH dollars are going to investigators who have been around awhile.

Now, of course, I don't mean to imply that "older researchers" aren't innovating.  Few brand-spanking new PhD's can keep up with Sydney Brenner.  A characteristic of biology that distinguishes it from theoretical physics is that doing good biology requires the grasp of a great many facts and stories.  Whereas a the guts of a PhD in physics can be derived over a weekend (or so I was told upon arriving at Princeton -- mine took rather longer) the combination of biological lore and experimental art accumulates over time.  But if we aren't funding young scientists with new ideas then we are missing out.  New methods and tools are the key to progress in biology.

Why should young scientists from abroad bother to come here?  Why should any young scientist bother to stay here?  Yes, yes -- the US still has the biggest budget and a tremendous diversity of research.  But even Sydney seems to be spending most of his time in Europe and Asia these days.  If we fail to ensure proper funding and opportunity for young biological scientists, then the innovation is simply going to happen elsewhere.