1. Fowler, C. Unnatural Selection (Gordon and Breach, Switzerland, 1994).
2. For clarity of exposition, we seek throughout to maintain a semantic distinction between the term “nucleic acid molecule” as a physical object and the term “nucleotide sequence” as abstract information or code describing the structure of such a molecule.
3. Heller, M.A. & Eisenberg, R.S. Science 280, 698–701 (1998).
4. Gold, E.R. Nature 18, 1217–1218 (2000).
5. Nuffield Council on Bioethics. The Ethics of Patenting DNA: a Discussion Paper (2002) <
http://www.nuffieldbioethics.org/patenting-dna
>.