Craig Venter’s pioneering synthetic genome has drawn the fire of a leading British genetics researcher.

John Sulston, who worked on the human genome project and has past history with both Venter and biopatents, has warned that allowing Venter to patent his creation could impede the progress of genetics research.

“I’ve read through some of these patents and the claims are very, very broad indeed,” says Sulston, chair of the University of Manchester’s Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation (BBC). “I hope very much these patents won’t be accepted because they would bring genetic engineering under the control of the J Craig Venter Institute. They would have a monopoly on a whole range of techniques.”

Sulston previous clashed with Venter over attempts to sequence the human genome. While Venter’s company was attempting to sequence for commercial reasons, Sulston championed the publicly funded sequencing effort, and open access to data (see: Human genome at ten – The human race).

His wider fight against bio-patents has continued with the ‘Manchester Manifesto’ work, carried out with economist Joseph Stiglitz (see: Stiglitz and Sulston: Who Owns Science?).

“Restrictions on access to information at any stage of the innovative process obstruct the flow of scientific information and thereby impede scientific progress. Such restrictions are also contrary to the needs of scientific inquiry and are inimical to openness and transparency,” says the manifesto, which came out in November 2009.

In response to Sulston’s latest broadside, a spokesman for the J Craig Venter Institute told the BBC, “There are a number of companies working in the synthetic genomic/biology space and also many academic labs. Most if not all of these have likely filed some degree of patent protection on a variety of aspects of their work so it would seem unlikely that any one group, academic centre or company would be able to hold a ‘monopoly’ on anything.”

Image right: Sulston (Wikipedia). Image left: Venter (Wikipedia).