"Feng Zhang of the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his colleagues found that they could replace the Cas9 enzyme that has proved so good at snipping the DNA of genes with another bacterial enzyme called Cpf1. "
They'll be more alternatives soon , making tis whole patent thing moot (hopefully).
One wonders if NIH money was involved in this, and if it was shouldn't everyone get to use it?
Off target effects are still a problem with this technique.
> if NIH money was involved in this, shouldn't everyone get to use it?
In principle, yes, but the Bayh-Dole act gives away any government stake in IP rights.
Some people see Bayh-Dole as an obviously corrupt and terrible idea. Those people typically haven't gone through the struggle of trying to justify the value proposition (or lack thereof) in an academic career. We (the US) are getting worse and worse at funding academia and this is one of the creative alternative "funding" sources used to prop up the increasingly shaky system (another important one: green cards). I suspect that if you asked most people involved in day-to-day research they'd rather take extra cash in exchange for letting the government keep some of the IP, but they aren't the ones who get to choose.
They'll be more alternatives soon , making tis whole patent thing moot (hopefully).
One wonders if NIH money was involved in this, and if it was shouldn't everyone get to use it?
Off target effects are still a problem with this technique.