Talk:CH391L/S13/DIY SyntheticBiology

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  • Benjamin Gilman 19:32, 30 January 2013 (EST): We talked about identifying canine perpetrators, but is there another example that anyone knows about where a DIY bio project resulted in an actual product or a significant basic science discovery?
    • Marco D Howard 20:32, 30 January 2013 (EST): This guy is making quantum dot producing cells Quantum Dot Biolaser
      • Benjamin Gilman 12:50, 31 January 2013 (EST): From the description it sounds like they haven't actually made it work at all though. Like a lot of other DIY bio projects, it's an entertaining idea with few if any commercial applications, and it's still at the idea stage. I guess I'm just hoping to find a DIY project that actually resulted in the product or system they wanted.
    • Max E. Rubinson 16:59, 31 January 2013 (EST): This article discusses some basic scientific discoveries made by DIY biologists.
  • Neil R Gottel 19:53, 30 January 2013 (EST): I was scanning the wikipedia page on DIY bio, and saw this: "DIYbio wants to revise the notion that you must be an academic with an advanced degree to make any significant contribution to the biology community." I appreciate this attitude, but is this at all realistic? Contributing to astronomy just requires a telescope, and contributing to open source programs just requires a computer, but the huge investment for a semi-decent bio lab seems to pretty much require that the person doing the experiments have some sort of qualification (now, whether colleges actually do their job in qualifying you is another matter).
    • Neil R Gottel 19:58, 30 January 2013 (EST): Also, just found this article in wired from 5 days ago about a cheap DIY cell-printer. Maybe we need one for our lab...
      • Jeffrey E. Barrick 20:52, 30 January 2013 (EST):Cool! I might want a smaller printhead for bacteria, but this might be a way to "print" a lot of microcultures.
  • Marco D Howard 20:06, 30 January 2013 (EST): Here is the video. I was talking about DIY neighbor hood labs. Dr Jorgensen also addresses the ethical side of synthetic biology. Here is the link to her lab Genspace
  • Jeffrey E. Barrick 13:05, 31 January 2013 (EST):For some reason I keep imagining a little "bacteria farm" like an ant farm where you buy some enclosed bacteria that grow through some agar such that they make interesting patterns of color. You could even rig them to evolve and diversify over time to have it stay interesting longer.
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