Ananda Chakrabarty received the first U.S. patent for a GM organism. This organism was
Ananda Chakrabarty received the first U.S. patent for a GM organism. This organism was
Select an option to attempt
Correct Answer: Option D
Explanation
Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty (1938–2020), an Indian-American microbiologist at General Electric, developed a Pseudomonas putida strain engineered to degrade crude oil (petroleum), by combining four naturally occurring oil-degrading plasmids (from different Pseudomonas strains: OCT, XYL, CAM, and NAH plasmids) into a single bacterium via conjugation. He filed a patent application in 1972, which was initially rejected as living organisms were deemed unpatentable. The case went to the US Supreme Court (Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 1980), which ruled 5–4 that 'anything under the sun that is made by man' could be patented, paving the way for patents on GMOs, gene sequences, and cell lines. This was the FIRST US patent granted for a living, genetically engineered organism.