ABSTRACT

Symbiosis or Pathogenicity:
Interactions between Academia and Industry in the
Agrobacterium Tumefaciens. Genome Race

CRIC Discussion Paper No. 63

Mark Harvey and Andrew McMeekin

The paper presents an analysis of the race to sequence and publish the genome of Agrobacterium tumefaciens, 'the natural genetic engineer', uniquely based on in-depth interviews of the main protagonists on both sides of the race (University of Washington, DuPont, and Unicamp/Brazil, versus Monsanto and Hiram College). From a scientific point of view, the bacterium is of strategic interest both for the transfer of its DNA into host plants and its widespread adoption in genetic modification technologies, and for shedding light on the evolutionary divergence between symbiosis and pathogenicity. From a social science point of view, a competition that involved two public-private collaborations sheds light on the dynamic relation and interdependency between public and private domain science and technologies. The paper explains the unusual pacing of the race and its surprising culmination in a dead-heat in terms of the dynamics of knowledge flows, private and public knowledge appropriation time windows, and the nature of academia-industry collaborative power relationships. In so doing it suggests the need to go beyond the public-versus-private dualism that has surrounded the 'genome wars' controversies, particularly as the race itself was followed by a new phase of collaboration between erstwhile protagonists in a project to study inter- and intra-species genetic variation. There are alternatives to symbiosis and pathogenicity in the relationship between public and private science and technology, involving many types of mutual dependency and power asymmetry.

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