yeast patents?

[Tinga]

Have companies ever patented their yeast strains?

My girlfriend is into the whole food industry and has a strong dislike for Monsanto and their corn patenting practices. Made me think that yeast companies and breweries could do the same thing. Has anyone ever heard of this?

 

[BradleyBrew]

it has to be invented or it would have to be a genetical modified organism which would most likely not be yeast. Therefore, I believe you could not isolate a yeast strain and patent it.

 

[broadbill]

Yeast are one of the most genetically modified organisms out there. It would be easy to make one into a GMO and patent it. The question is how you would modify it for brewing purposes?

From a practical standpoint, it is much easier to keep a yeast strain as a trade secret...that is what most breweries do.

 

[Zamial]

I believe the rule is you are not allowed to patent anything living. This is also the same reason people do not own patents on spices/herbs.

If you can modify the organic life into something else where it produces a specific compound. That compound can be patented. This is what I assume is happening with the corn. This is also why the DOW chemical corporation owns every human being on the planet. Do not worry you have been deemed "acceptable losses" to them...

 

[Denny]

From a practical standpoint, it is much easier to keep a yeast strain as a trade secret...that is what most breweries do.

Maybe some, but I certainly wouldn't say "most".

 

[broadbill]

Maybe some, but I certainly wouldn't say "most".

What I meant to say was that breweries that want to keep their yeast strain to themselves do not utilize legal procedures to do so. They keep the actual yeast to themselves.

 

[digitalhifi]

I believe the rule is you are not allowed to patent anything living. This is also the same reason people do not own patents on spices/herbs.

If you can modify the organic life into something else where it produces a specific compound. That compound can be patented. This is what I assume is happening with the corn. This is also why the DOW chemical corporation owns every human being on the planet. Do not worry you have been deemed "acceptable losses" to them...

Living things can in fact be patented. There are rules that apply to what can and cannot be patented for living things. This is for plants (not yeast) Patents Guidance, Tools & Manuals

This appears to list yeast as patentable NCYC - Yeast Patent Deposits

So the question is, why does no one patent them?

Fun fact, Louis Pasteur had a patent on isolated yeast. Bioethics and Patent Law: The Relaxin Case

 

[Pogopunx82]

Most of the grain Homebrewers/Breweries use is GMO. Sad thing. Damn Cargill and Con-Agra.

 

[Hex]

Synthetic Saccharomyces

 

[Glossolalia]

Sure, of course, companies patent transgenic and recombinant yeast strains. See here, here, here, here, for some examples. People/companies/universities also patent brewing methodologies, brewing apparatuses, and newly created varieties of hops (example here).

If your girlfriend is really easily bothered by these issues, then I really don't recommend researching where all the grain those so-called "local" breweries use comes from (recently watched an American commercial brewer on YouTube espousing his "all local" philosophy with fat sacks of Bestmalz malt stacked up behind him). Just a taste: (1) A couple of the common suppliers of brewing grains are subsidiaries of ConAgra Foods and Cargill, (2) All of the large suppliers of brewing grains are also in the business of making artificial textures, flavors, extenders for the production of processed foods, (3) Some suppliers of brewing grains do use transgenic technologies to create disease-resistant strains, and (4) Governments in the US, Canada, and Europe subsidize barley creating some international market distortions some nations consider unfair.

 

[smokinghole]

To my knowledge no GMO yeasts have been approved for beverage brewing applications yet. Plus I think it's less the actual organism that is patented but more the unique genetic code the organism contains. Yeast are modified for ethanol production and pharma industry to produce drug products.

 

[bb239605]

As a Cargill employee, we let me say, we don't produce seeds or do any growing, we simply buy crops. furthermore GMO is a part of human history. look at dogs, bananas, almost all rudimentary animals, corn, etc. Only now our techniques are more refined and we have better control.

Kinds silly and, imo, ignorant to think all gmo is bad.

Also, don't get me wrong here, Cargill does their fair share of bad things, as do most big companies that ate focused on the bottom dollar

 

[smokinghole]

GMO is not the same as selective breeding practices. Often times a scientist can find the genetic sequence that produces whatever protein they're interested in, but sometimes flanking sequences weren't taking into consideration. Soybeans and other crops are a prime example of where GMO has altered in some ways for the better (faster growth), but at the same time decreased the phytoestrogens. So it's my opinion that when you delete/insert/modify something from a genetic sequence you're affecting more than that specific region of DNA and the protein it produces.

 

[bb239605]

I disagree. Selective breeding is a form of gmo, just a different way to go about it. To think other wise is to not understand what gmo means. You are selecting genes you like then breeding that into the next generation. Sounds like gmo to me.

It is my belief that selective breeding also can have unforeseen consequences good or bad as with manually selecting genes.

I suppose we shall remain in disagreement then because well, that is just my scientific belief on gmo.

 

[smokinghole]

I'm not disagreeing that selective breeding can have unintended consequences, I'm just saying they're different.

Breeding is breeding, selective breeding is just a specific type with goals. GMO is taking DNA from one organism and placing it into another could even be the same species. Tomatos are some of the most frequently genetically modified yet under the radar because they take tomato genes to put into tomato genes. It's not like when they tried making BT resistant corn using A. tumafaciens.

 

[Tinga]

oops

 

[Glossolalia]

GMO is not the same as selective breeding practices. Often times a scientist can find the genetic sequence that produces whatever protein they're interested in, but sometimes flanking sequences weren't taking into consideration. Soybeans and other crops are a prime example of where GMO has altered in some ways for the better (faster growth), but at the same time decreased the phytoestrogens. So it's my opinion that when you delete/insert/modify something from a genetic sequence you're affecting more than that specific region of DNA and the protein it produces.

I do this stuff for a living, but in mice rather than yeast or plants. Problems with flanking sequences and spurious insertions are pretty much a thing of the past. When we began to realize that these were potential problems, we changed the methodologies of transgenic production. Now, you can knock in a new sequence right into original locus. There are even methodologies for changing single nucleotides. So, the end genome sometimes really can be the exact same as if we selectively-bred. Of course, there can be unforeseen homeostatic events and issues with epigenetics, but you get those with selective breeding, too. Search the Jackson or Harland animal catalogs for all the selectively bred mice that have interesting phenotypes other than those they were originally bred to have.

 

[smokinghole]

Good to know. I only have experience working with different bacteria and yeast at school and we have not covered much in the way of animals at this point.

 

[biochemedic]

I do this stuff for a living

Just make sure you don't go to work hung over and accidentally clone a bunch of monkey-frogs....