Box 1. Bermuda gets tough over resource collecting

But his voyage into the Sargasso Sea also took the genomics pioneer into uncharted waters. The rules on bioprospecting in this small British protectorate are still a work in progress. And experience with expeditions such as Venter's has prompted Bermuda to temporarily shut down some research projects until it strengthens its regulations.

Bermuda is now rewriting its scientific collection rules completely, in preparation for joining the Convention on Biological Diversity as a protectorate of the United Kingdom, which has already adopted the convention. And lessons learned from Venter's scientific expedition and from a separate commercial project started in 1999 by Diversa, a San Diego firm seeking drugs from microbes, technology tools and industrial chemicals, will influence the formation of these rules.

Both Venter's group and Diversa gathered marine samples under the umbrella of a long-standing collection permit held by the Bermuda Biological Station for Research in St. George. Nearly 100 years old, the station gets most of its funding from NASA and the US National Science Foundation.

In 1999, Diversa struck a deal with the station to bioprospect in the waters off Bermuda. But Jack Ward, the official at the Bermuda Ministry of the Environment responsible for developing bioprospecting policy, says that the government only learned of Diversa's project from a newspaper article published at the time. After enquiries, Ward says, station officials explained that Diversa was only studying organisms that could be found in many locations in the Atlantic Ocean, not looking for new ones. Subsequently, Bermuda didn't require Diversa to secure a government permit.

But in May this year, Ward learned that Diversa was marketing a biotechnology tool called DiscoveryPoint Fluorescent Proteins, which was based on a protein collected from a coral in Bermuda, and for which the firm is seeking a patent. The research station is to get a 1% royalty, but the government and people of Bermuda will get nothing.

Meanwhile, Venter sailed into the Sargasso Sea in February 2003. The organisms collected were shipped to Maryland, where a US Department of Energy grant paid to have them sequenced at the Venter Science Foundation Joint Technology Center.

"We do this as part of discovery to enhance science," says Venter. "We are trying to benefit every country we work in." Bermudian officials don't fault Venter, who says that the Bermuda Biological Station's director, oceanographer Anthony Knap, assured him that no government permits were required — advice that Knap confirms. The microbial DNA sequences are being placed in the publicly accessible GenBank for scientific use.

But Ward says that the ministry is unhappy about the outcomes of both projects, and that Bermuda is revoking the station's collection permit. A new permit, with stricter controls, will be in place within the next month.

Bermudian officials regret what they regard as a lost opportunity. "There is a value issue here," says Ward. "Something that held value has been put in the public domain and made valueless for the people of Bermuda."