There’s been a lot of hype surrounding biotechnology last week. Craig Venter's team synthesized a genome from scratch. It is certainly an important step towards the creation of the first synthetic organism.

We can see the creation of a synthetic organism as a three step process:

(1) Transplant and "boot up" the genome of one species of bacterium into another. Already done.

(2) Go beyond merely sequencing a genome to design and build one. The newly synthesized genome -- a copy of the genome of Mycoplasma genitalium -- has more than half a million base pairs. Already done, this is what was made public last week.

(3) Insert the new synthetic genome into a standard bacterium (“boot up” a cell with the synthetic genome and see if it can live with it). Not done yet, but we can expect the announcement of it in the next months.

At that point, scientists will have brought to life an organism that never before existed. This whole process is “rewriting” one of the last mythic distinctions in science, the distinction between living and non-living matter.

The implications of this from the point of view of innovation and entrepreneurship are huge. Scientists will be able to take a file stored on a computer and using synthetic chemistry, turn that information into life. With the new ability, scientists will begin to custom-design organisms, creating biological "robots" that could produce from scratch chemicals or drugs. The biotech industry would boost forward significantly.

There’s a lot already said about that, just check the news… but the news don’t say something that I find particularly relevant. Venter’s team quietly filed an application last May that seeks to own the synthetic life form his lab is creating.

This may signal the start of a commercial race to synthesize and privatize synthetic life forms. And Venter's company is positioning itself to become the “Microsoft” of synthetic biology. This is an important issue, with far-reaching social, ethical and environmental implications. Should anyone own what the application calls a "free living organism that can grow and replicate"? As we all know, bioengineered organisms have been patented by biotech companies for years, but should this cover organisms made entirely from scratch? And if the answer is yes, where should we draw the line? Owning a bacteria is certainly one thing, but what happens with more complex organisms?

My first reaction would be, why not? (as long as the output is ethically correct)... But I guess the debate has just begun. Now is no longer a theoretical discussion. It is real. It is happening. We all need to think carefully about it.