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  • From: "Naomi Counides" <naomi@oznayim.us>
  • To: "'North American Fruit Explorers'" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Revealed: how seed market is controlled by Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, Dow & DuPont
  • Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2010 10:31:07 -0600

Article about the Bio hackers
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101006/full/467650a.html

Just a taste here: "Carlson penned essays and articles that fanned the
embers of the idea. "The era of garage biology is upon us," he wrote in a
2005 article in the technology magazine Wired. "Want to participate?" The
democratization of science, he reasoned, would bring in new talent to build
and improve scientific instrumentation, and maybe help to uncover new
industrial applications for biotechnology. Eventually, he decided to follow
his own advice, setting up a garage lab in 2005. "I made the prediction," he
says, "so I figured maybe I should do the experiment."
Carlson is not alone. Would-be 'biohackers' around the world are setting up
labs in their garages, closets and kitchens — from professional scientists
keeping a side project at home to individuals who have never used a pipette
before. They buy used lab equipment online, convert webcams into US$10
microscopes and incubate tubes of genetically engineered Escherichia coli
in their armpits. (It's cheaper than shelling out $100 or more on a 37 °C
incubator.) Some share protocols and ideas in open forums. Others prefer to
keep their labs under wraps, concerned that authorities will take one look
at the gear in their garages and label them as bioterrorists.

For now, most members of the do-it-yourself, or DIY, biology community are
hobbyists, rigging up cheap equipment and tackling projects that — although
not exactly pushing the boundaries of molecular biology — are creative proof
of the hacker principle. Meredith Patterson, a computer programmer based in
San Francisco, California, whom some call the 'doyenne of DIYbio', made
glow-in-the-dark yogurt by engineering the bacteria within to produce a
fluorescent protein. Others hope to learn more about themselves: a group
called DIYgenomics has banded together to analyse their genomes, and even
conduct and participate in small clinical trials. For those who aspire to
change the world, improving biofuel development is a popular draw. And
several groups are focused on making standard instruments — such as PCR
machines, which amplify segments of DNA — cheaper and easier to use outside
the confines of a laboratory, ultimately promising to make DIYbio more
accessible"

Naomi






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