Secret signatures inside genomic DNA.
A simple, practical method to watermark short trademarks or signatures into genomic DNA is introduced. Since the marking method is biologically innocuous, it can be applied to all commercialized bacteria to help establish brand names for the engineered strains and to resolve legal disputes regarding gene-related patents. The first such strain of Bacillus subtilis is engineered and is ready to be distributed.
Department of Computational Biology, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, University of Tokyo, Kashiwanoha 5-1-5, 277-8561 Kashiwa, Japan. arita@k.u-tokyo,ac.jp
Masanori
M
Arita
Yoshiaki
Y
Ohashi
D001412:Bacillus subtilis / Q000235:genetics* / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D002874:Chromosome Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D016172:DNA Fingerprinting / Q000379:methods*; D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000032:analysis* / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics; D005818:Genetic Engineering / Q000379:methods; D016680:Genome, Bacterial; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods*; D010330:Patents as Topic; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods; D011356:Product Labeling / Q000379:methods*
D004269:DNA, Bacterial