Genetics in the kitchen

How Russia can become a driver of a new global market

Vladimir Gubaylovsky, Forbes, 22.05.2019

In the last 5 years, a small but promising market for "home" DNA sequencing and "kitchen" genetics has begun to form. Genetic engineering research is getting closer to the mass consumer - a person without special education and without a scientific background.

The world's leading geneticists predict that in the coming years there will be a boom in the genetic engineering market comparable to the mass distribution of personal computers in the 1980s. The decisive factor may be the appearance of the MinION sequencer from Oxford Nanopore. It allows you to conduct research at home, which in accuracy and complexity are not inferior to the products of the world's leading genetic laboratories.

As geneticist Denis Rebrikov, Doctor of Biological Sciences, vice–rector of the N. I. Pirogov Russian National Research University, told Laba.media in an interview, MinION allows you to decipher a "long read" in one step - several hundred thousand base pairs of a DNA molecule. This is much longer than the length of the complete genome of any virus.

The genome of your hamburger

Today, the main question is what kind of genetic engineering tools can become mass. What manipulations with DNA can create a successful market? Geneticist Brian Knowton listed in his blog some areas that seem promising in this context. If the technology allows us to prepare samples within 10 minutes and quickly carry out their genetic analysis, this gives, for example, the following opportunities:

• check the hospital ward for the presence of staphylococcus aureus,

• check food for safety (for example, for the presence of E. coli),

• conduct a forensic analysis right at the crime scene,

• check the airport, office or residential premises for the flu virus,

• analyze bacterial contamination in water,

• check the labeling of products.

Moreover, the sequencer can contact the DNA database and conduct an online analysis of the results obtained.

Knowton explains: "Potentially, anyone can launch such online applications. Collect some DNA and wait a bit: the processing will take place in the Internet cloud, and the answer will appear on your phone. You don't need to know anything about genetics, you just see a message that "Escherichia coli DNA has been found in food" or "DNA of a new rhino has been found in the litter".

The first version of the WIMP application (What's in my Pot – "What's in my pot?") has already been implemented on the basis of MinION technologies. It allows, for example, to sequence a hamburger to make sure that the cutlet is beef and not horse meat.

Knowton notes that for widespread use, MinION should become even cheaper. Now the sequencer itself costs about $1000, but it still needs biomaterials, replaceable flow cells, a sample preparation device, etc. However, it is obvious that the technology will become available to the average consumer in a matter of years.

A portable sequencer will actually allow a person to see the world in all its biological diversity – and avoid many of the dangers that it brings to us. Already in 2019, Oxford Nanopore promises to release a full-fledged SmidgION sequencer working in conjunction with a smartphone.

Neurophysiologist Ilya Zakharov, an employee of the Psychological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, named another direction that could become a driver of the genetic market. These are new-generation DNA tests that open up the possibility of predicting human development with much greater accuracy.

"I think there will be a serious breakthrough, but it will not be related to technology (personal DNA tests will still be convenient to order from special companies for a long time), but with the amount of data," the scientist believes. "So far, genetic tests are not so valuable in many areas, but if there is more and more data and more centralized access to them, the situation may change."

Genes and laws

An important condition for the development of "kitchen" genetic engineering is access to biological materials. Currently, international trade in these substances is most often limited to the UBMTA standard agreement (Uniform Biological Material Transfer Agreement). This is how, for example, the non–profit organization Addgene, founded in 2004, works - one of the world's largest non-profit "repositories of plasmids" (that is, small DNA molecules used in genetic engineering). At the moment, the company has sold and delivered almost a million plasmids to 93 countries. Russia is also in the top ten users.

The company provides its biomaterials at face value to all who comply with UBMTA. The agreement regulates the correctness of delivery: ensuring provenance (origin of the biomaterial), patent purity, safety of use and other important points. Among other things, the agreement prohibits transferring biomaterials to other users and using them for commercial purposes. UBMTA is a serious limitation that slows down the genetic boom in the global market.

But even this controlling authority is outliving its own. In October 2018 , the American organization BioBricks Foundation and the British OpenPlant Synthetic Biology Research Centre has proposed a new format of the Open Material Transfer Agreement, or OpenMTA, for the supply of biomaterials. This agreement is immediately regarded as international and is designed to remove a number of restrictions on the supply of biomaterials.

The OpenMTA developers explain their concept as follows. The desire of researchers and organizations to freely exchange materials is based on the idea that even if each individual study has limited value, their sharing can become much more useful. This idea is especially close to synthetic biology, where standards have been developed for the compatibility of modular components and parts of DNA and combining multiple parts is a normal practice.

The main difference between OpenMTA and other agreements is that researchers are allowed to use the obtained materials for any legitimate purposes, including commercial ones. They can transfer materials received under the OpenMTA agreement, however, if requested, they must report to the supplier.

If OpenMTA replaces the old UBMTA agreement on the world stage, there will be no serious obstacles to turning genetic engineering into a mass market. Biomaterials are the main tool of a geneticist.

"Genetic engineering can be compared to cooking Peking duck,– says Denis Rebrikov. – The recipe is not difficult to find, but without the necessary ingredients, you still won't do anything. But if you have all the ingredients and have a recipe, it's another matter. By themselves, manipulations – mixing micro–volumes in test tubes - are quite routine things that can be done as part of a school biology workshop."

The proliferation of portable sequencers and other biotechnological equipment, a simple form of agreements for the supply of biomaterials, and the expansion of the public domain in biotechnology can create a comfortable environment for many researchers who are ready to solve the most difficult tasks on their own. And we have already seen what such a free community is capable of. The most popular smartphone platform, Android, has been developed under the GNU GPL license (more than two billion devices work on it), Wikipedia is being created under the Creative Commons license – the most popular and in–demand encyclopedia in the world (about half a billion visits per month).

Leadership Chances

The development of free genetic technologies in Russia gives great chances to become one of the leaders of the new market. "From the point of view of the availability of specialists, it seems to me that there are not so few world-class professionals in genetics in Russia. Especially when compared with other fields of science," Ilya Zakharov believes.

At the moment, Russia has a law on biomedical cell products, which regulates the creation of medicines and their medical use. The Russian law does not regulate other manipulations with biomaterials. With the right approach of legislators to new forms of genetic engineering, Russia may well become a country that determines where the new DNA startup market is developing. No one can predict the volume of the future market – as no analyst in the 1970s undertook to predict the volume of the new computer technology market. Today, this market has grown to more than $3 trillion and is not going to stop.

The article was prepared with the participation of the Laba.media resource

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru