It takes about 30,000 genes to make you such a wondrously complex lifeform. Those genes can be credited for your enviable physique, your sparkling eyes and those heartstopping dimples.

Okay, let’s cut the flattery and hotfoot it to the other end of life’s spectrum. Here, it may take fewer than 400 genes to build a basic lifeform. This is what Craig Venter, the buccaneering American biologist who was instrumental in spelling out the human genome, is attempting to do. His plan is to sew together the minimum number of genes necessary to create an off-the-shelf, living microbe.

Venter has become the poster boy of synthetic biology, a field devoted to assembling microbes from scratch in the lab (think of it as extreme genetic engineering). He believes that by stripping down, gene by gene, nature’s simplest free-living microbe – mycoplasma genitalium, a pesky resident of the human urinary tract – the microbes can become bespoke factories, churning out fuels such as ethanol.

Controversially, he has filed a patent on his minimalist microbe (nobody’s sure if he’s actually made it yet; according to a paper published in Science on Friday, he’s getting there). If granted, the patent would give Venter the monopoly on using artificial microbes for generating clean fuel.

Such microbes could save the planet. They could also be worth a trillion dollars, making Venter the richest man on Earth. One civil society group accused the Venter Institute, the research company he runs, of aspiring to be a “Microbesoft”.

Pat Mooney, from the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (the ETC Group), a Canadian lobbying outfit, says: “Venter and his colleagues have breached a societal boundary, and the public hasn’t even had a chance to debate the far-reaching social, ethical and environmental implications of synthetic life.” The ETC Group objects to Venter’s patent on the ground of public safety and morality.

Would a synthetic bug cause havoc if it escaped from the lab? No, because it’s too weak to survive in the wild. Could synthetic biology be used to build bioweapons? Yes. Once it’s proven that we can cook up fully functioning bacteria and viruses, the recipe book can be used for good or ill. On the moral front, Mooney says of Venter: “God has competition.” To argue that the making of life should remain the province of a divine creator is no argument at all.

Should Venter get his patent? It’s hard to justify why not, although his desire for an excessive intellectual landgrab must be curbed. To claim ownership, as Venter does, over organisms that lack certain genes – as well as those that contain others – is avaricious.

By the way, isn’t it mindblowing that “life” can range from a gaggle of 400 genes mooching about in a Petri dish, to a freethinking assortment of 30,000 genes, with sparkling eyes and heartstopping dimples?

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