The journal Science has announced that it will publish Syngenta鈥檚 rice genome sequence work even though the Swiss pharmaceutical company will not be depositing the DNA sequence data in an international public database, such as GenBank. The data will instead be placed on Syngenta鈥檚 web site and conditions of access will apply.
The move confirms the fears expressed by leading genetic scientists that access to the whole data set would be restricted when the research is published on 5 April 2002.
Michael Ashburner, at Cambridge University, who has campaigned for complete genome data to be made freely available, claims: 鈥淢ost of the academic community are furious with Science and will vote with their feet. Already genome data is being published in Nature at a ratio of two-to-one over Science.鈥�
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Nature told New 杏吧原创 that it is an essential pre-condition for publication in their journal that full genome data is placed in one of the few 鈥渁ppropriate, identified, publicly available databases in general use鈥�.
It is the second time that Science has taken such a step. The first was with the human genome draft published by private company Celera, in February 2001.
Decision defended
But 厂肠颈别苍肠别鈥檚 editor-in-chief, Donald Kennedy, defends the decision: 鈥淭he question is whether the public benefit inherent in placing these valuable data into the public domain 鈥� rather than in trade-secret status 鈥� is greater than the cost associated with having the sequence accessible through a private site rather than the publicly supported GenBank. We thought that was clearly true for the human genome sequence. For rice the case is surely even stronger.鈥�
Kennedy told New 杏吧原创 that he would prefer the data to be placed in GenBank. He says he could not foresee another situation where Science would allow results to be published under restricted access, but added, 鈥渃ircumstances change鈥�.
Rumours of the journal鈥檚 decision led Ashburner and 20 other prominent gene researchers 鈥� including two Nobel Prize winners 鈥� to write a letter of protest to Kennedy.
Science insists the rice genome data will be freely accessible on the company鈥檚 website, under similar conditions to Celera鈥檚 human genome draft. But the researchers disagree and claim these conditions were not met with Celera.
Signed letter
They say the 鈥渄ata-access agreement鈥� between Science and Syngenta will make it impossible for scientists to use the rice sequence for research. The agreement states that academics requiring more than 100,000 bases per day, per week must submit a letter co-signed by the 鈥渁uthorised representative of the researcher鈥檚 institution鈥� to the company for approval first.
The rice genome sequence is made up of 400 million bases and the scientists say that in order to carry out any meaningful research they need to be able to look at the whole sequence at once.
鈥淚f you are studying a particular kinase, for example, it is of no use to just have a tiny strand of DNA to look at, you need to work on the whole lot at once,鈥� Ashburner explains. 鈥淏ecause so much of biology is comparative-based, it鈥檚 absolutely essential that we have an easy way of getting hold of the data we need whenever we need to. If you have to trawl through different websites with different conditions, it will be impossible.鈥�
No-one was available for comment at Syngenta.