USDA Patents Microbes to Fight Wheat Fungus

This is slightly off-topic, but I thought you had to breed a new or
different kind of strain of a plant or propagate a particular clone in
order to patent it. I didn't think you could just discover a new
species and patent it outright. Since the article below is referring to
fungi and bacteria, neither of which are plants, are the rules
different? And furthermore, what about animals, including mammals? If
you develop a new breed of cat or dog, can you patent it these days? Or
that new species of rodent they discovered in Southeast Asia not too
long ago: Can the entire species be patented by its discoverers? It
seems weird to find a fungus that naturally secretes an antibiotic that
kills some disease (rather than being genetically modified to do so),
and then patent it without you having "invented" or developed it in any
way. All you did was find it.

I guess not being a lawyer, I just don't understand what the original
intent of granting patents really is.

--Lee Poulsen
Pasadena, California, USDA Zone 10a

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http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2006/060717.htm
USDA Patents Microbes to Fight Wheat Fungus

By Jan Suszkiw
July 17, 2006
Four yeasts and three bacteria that live on flowering wheat heads, but
cause no harm there, have been patented by the U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) as biological control agents in the fight against
Fusarium head blight (FHB).

Caused by the fungus Fusarium graminearum, FHB is among the most costly
diseases of cereal crops worldwide, including wheat, barley and oats.
From 1998 to 2000, FHB epidemics in U.S. small grains inflicted an
estimated $2.7 billion worth of losses, notes David Schisler. He is a
plant pathologist with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), USDA's
chief scientific research agency.

The fungus infects wheat through its flower tissues, including anthers.
But competition for space and nutrients there is fierce, according to
studies by Schisler and colleagues at the ARS National Center for
Agricultural Utilization Research in Peoria, Ill., and at Ohio State
University (OSU) in Columbus. Indeed, some of the bacteria and yeasts
that the researchers isolated from wheat anthers secrete antibiotics,
or use other means, to keep the fungus at bay--to the wheat plant's
benefit.

To exploit this "natural antagonism," Schisler and OSU colleagues
Michael Boehm and Naseem Khan devised fermentation procedures to
culture quantities of the beneficial microbes for application to
flowering wheat heads. The four yeasts and three bacteria that have
been patented (U.S. No. 7,001,755) were the "top picks" from about 700
microbial specimens the scientists evaluated for their fungus-fighting
prowess. Of these seven, yeast strain OH 182.9 performed the best in
field trials, reducing FHB's severity in spring, winter and durum
wheats by 20 to 60 percent.

USDA's patenting of this approach to controlling FHB is a critical
first step towards garnering the commercial interest necessary to
develop the microbes as registered biological control products that can
be used separately or in specific combinations on wheat or other cereal
crops. Their development, along with more FHB-resistant wheat
varieties, is especially appealing because the use of foliar fungicides
is complicated by timing and availability by state.