I'm firmly on the side of this sort of thing not being being something you can patent. Patenting the means to snip, maybe. Patenting what has been snipped, no. That to me sounds like someone patenting the paper based on the shape cut out with a pair of scissors. I see no harm in patenting the means of cutting the paper, but the paper, like the gene, existed already, and just because you've taken a subset of it, doesn't mean it's suddenly something new, it's not.