Thread: Life Technologies to buy genetic sequencing firm for $375 M.

Life Technologies to buy genetic sequencing firm for $375 million

By Keith Darcé, UNION-TRIBUNE
Tuesday, August 17, 2010 at 7:07 p.m.

Life Technologies of San Diego said Tuesday it will acquire Ion Torrent, a Guilford, Conn., company that has developed a new way of sequencing genes, in a deal worth as much as $725 million.

The move is Life Technologies’ latest effort to boost its position in the increasingly competitive and potentially lucrative genomic sequencing technology business.

It also intensifies the rivalry between Life Technologies and Illumina, another San Diego genetic sequencing technology company, said Daniel MacArthur, a genetic researcher at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, England.

“Life Technologies already owns a second-generation sequencing platform, but has been struggling to compete against the current market-dominating technology from Illumina,â€

They are killing us through the food and water supply. And recently John Insane aka John McCain introduced legislation that will prohibit you from purchasing a multi vitamin, vitamin C or any natural non Montanto engineered product. There is also legislation right now to prohibit you from growing your own garden. The elite aka Bilderburg Group is just ready to kill us all off, to give them more clean air to breath.


It's official. Monsanto Corporation is out to own the world's food supply, the dangers of genetic engineering and reduced biodiversity notwithstanding, as they pig-headedly set about hog-tying farmers with their monopoly plans. We've discovered chilling new evidence of this in recent patents that seek to establish ownership rights over pigs and their offspring.
zoom The Earth is flat, pigs were invented by Monsanto, and genetically modified organisms are safe. Right.
In the crop department, Monsanto is well on their way to dictating whatconsumers will eat, what farmers will grow, and how much Monsanto willget paid for seeds. In some cases those seeds are designed not to reproduce sowable offspring. In others, a flock of lawyers stand ready to swoop down on farmers who illegally, or even unknowingly, end up with Monsanto's private property growing in their fields.

Oneway or another, Monsanto wants to make sure no food is grown that theydon't own -- and the record shows they don't care if it's safe for theenvironment or not. Monsanto has aggressively set out to bulldozeenvironmental concerns about its genetically engineered (GE) seeds at every regulatory level.

Sowhy stop in the field? Not content to own the pesticide and theherbicide and the crop, they've made a move on the barnyard by filingtwo patents which would make the corporate giant the sole owner of thatfamous Monsanto invention: the pig.

The Monsanto Pig (Patent pending)

Thepatent applications were published in February 2005 at the WorldIntellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in Geneva. A Greenpeaceresearcher who monitors patent applications, Christoph Then, uncoveredthe fact that Monsanto is seeking patents not only on methods ofbreeding, but on actual breeding herds of pigs as well as the offspringthat result.

"If these patents are granted, Monsanto can legallyprevent breeders and farmers from breeding pigs whose characteristicsare described in the patent claims, or force them to pay royalties,"says Then. "It's a first step toward the same kind of corporate controlof an animal line that Monsanto is aggressively pursuing with variousgrain and vegetable lines