Designer genes — a joke no more

Originally published 23 June 1986

Ever since bio­engi­neers learned how to tin­ker with DNA and turn out tai­lor-made liv­ing organ­isms we have been hear­ing jokes about “design­er genes.”

Well, accord­ing to a [June 1986] report in Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can, it’s no longer a joke.

A small biotech out­fit in Hous­ton called NovaGene claims to have insert­ed the name of the com­pa­ny into the genet­ic code of its live prod­uct — as sure­ly as Glo­ria Van­der­bilt and Calvin Kline stitch their logo onto the seat of your pants.

NovaGene’s prod­uct is a genet­i­cal­ly-engi­neered live-virus vac­cine designed to counter a dis­ease of cat­tle called infec­tious bovine rhino­tra­cheitis. As an extra twist, the com­pa­ny inserts the name “NovaGene” into the viral DNA. When­ev­er the virus repli­cates, the com­pa­ny’s logo is also repro­duced. The “NovaGene” logo has become part of the fab­ric of life on Earth, although the brand­ed virus has not yet been approved for field test­ing by the government.

The tech­nique for brand­ing a live prod­uct was invent­ed by Mal­on Kit, a physi­cian and bio­engi­neer who is also the pres­i­dent of NovaGene. Here is how he does it: The genet­ic code of a liv­ing organ­ism is stored on a long twist­ed mol­e­cule known as DNA. The code is chem­i­cal, and it con­tains the infor­ma­tion that enables the organ­ism to build mol­e­cules called amino acids in an appro­pri­ate sequence. The amino acids are the sub­units of the pro­teins. There are 20 or so amino acids, and in a chem­i­cal short­hand each of them can be des­ig­nat­ed by a letter.

Using stan­dard tech­niques, Kit spliced into the viral DNA the codes for a sequence of amino acids for which the let­ter sym­bols spell “NovaGene.” The let­ter N is the sym­bol for the amino acid asparagine, and asparagine is the first cod­ed amino acid in the sequence. It is fol­lowed by glu­t­a­mine (Q — there is no amino acid des­ig­nat­ed by O) — valine (V), ala­nine (A), glycine (G), glu­tam­ic acid (E), asparagine (N), and glu­tam­ic acid (E).

Keeping logo harmless

Although the “NovaGene” logo will be copied every time the virus repli­cates, it is impor­tant that the “NovaGene” gene not be expressed; that is, that the virus does not try to build an amino acid sequence based on the “NovaGene” code. To fore­stall this pos­si­bil­i­ty, Kit inserts the com­pa­ny logo into the DNA far away from the start codes, those DNA seg­ments that turn on pro­tein pro­duc­tion. And even if the logo code were some­how expressed, the result­ing chain of amino acids would pre­sum­ably be too small to func­tion as a bio­log­i­cal­ly active molecule.

If nec­es­sary, the logo can be read by iso­lat­ing the virus from tis­sue and expos­ing it to a sub­stance that binds to the DNA mol­e­cule at the “NovaGene” code.

Dave Banker, vice-pres­i­dent of finance and busi­ness at NovaGene, expressed sat­is­fac­tion that his small com­pa­ny that was the first to put a brand name into a liv­ing prod­uct, beat­ing out the big phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal hous­es. NovaGene is now look­ing for ven­ture cap­i­tal, and a news-catch­ing break­through like brand­ing will cer­tain­ly help.

I also spoke with Mal­on Kit, the cre­ator of DNA brand­ing. He want­ed to talk about the broad­er tech­ni­cal achieve­ments of his com­pa­ny, but I stuck with brand­ing; after all, putting a brand name into the codes of life seems to me a his­toric step in the expres­sion of the Amer­i­can busi­ness dream.

Benefits of branding

Asked to explain the val­ue of DNA brand­ing, Kit men­tioned three things: First, he said, brand­ing pro­tects the com­pa­ny against lia­bil­i­ty claims. For exam­ple, if some­thing hap­pens to a cow after vac­ci­na­tion, the farmer will tend to blame the vac­cine. The com­pa­ny can deter­mine if the vac­cine was an autho­rized ver­sion of the product.

Sec­ond, brand­ing pro­vides gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tors with a han­dle for main­tain­ing and ver­i­fy­ing the safe­ty and effi­cien­cy of prod­ucts they have approved.

Third, brand­ing will help pre­vent boot­leg­ging of a live prod­uct by oth­er com­pa­nies. Accord­ing to Kit, this can be a prob­lem for com­pa­nies hop­ing to recov­er research and devel­op­ment costs for a prod­uct that will hap­pi­ly repli­cate in some­one else’s laboratory.

If NovaGene has brand­ed a virus, then brand-name organ­isms have made their appear­ance in the tree of life. There is no rea­son, I sup­pose, why DNA brand­ing can­not be applied to any liv­ing organ­ism. An engi­neered virus is obvi­ous­ly the place to start, but spe­cial-pur­pose bac­te­ria will not be far behind.

Even for humans, the dif­fer­ence between design­er jeans and design­er genes could be only a mat­ter of time. Per­haps some­day you can have your own DNA brand­ed with the logo of your choice, like a bumper stick­er on your car. Then, cell by cell, your mes­sage will be repli­cat­ed, down through the generations.