The Boston Open Source Science Lab... The Boston Open Source Science Lab (BOSSlab.org) Hey DIYbio-Boston peeps, It’s been a while! I’ve been making progress on getting us a lab space here in the Boston area. I’ve acquired a shipping container that has a molecular biology lab built inside of it and am spinning up an organization to take care of it. It’s called the Boston Open Source Science Lab, or the BOSSlab (cred for the awesome name goes to a brilliant volunteer at the recent iGEM Jamboree). Some basic info about it online athttp://bosslab.org. My vision for the space is to develop...

iGEM 09 Jamboree DIYbio meetup recap... A bunch of interesting projects ideas were discussed at the DIYbio meetup during the iGEM Jamboree 2 weeks ago – here are my notes: Yashas Shetty wants to organize an international DIY microscope building session and subsequent videoconference for early December based on his DIY Microscope guide.  See http://hackteria.org/wiki/index.php/DIY_microscopy for instructions Alex Hornstein told us he had just been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes and wanted to synthesize his own insulin, DIY-style. Would we help? Hell yes! A grad student from Harvard who had dropped in pointed...

The Bigger Picture: Domesticating Biotec... Scientific American Oct 1953 - Evolution in Bacteria DIYbio aims to be “the institution for the amateur,” developing and providing access to all of the resources a professional might have and an amateur might want, such as equipment, protocols, access to literature, etc. And we are collectively doing so in a distributed fashion right now. But we are also doing something more, something that will occur slowly, over long time-scales. We are helping lay the foundations for cultural shift. We are laying the foundations for broad, deep, domestic understanding of science...

Crafting the Biological... Sophia Roosth, a doctoral student at MIT, presented a talk at The Kennedy School of Government STS seminar series on 9 Nov 2009 called “Crafting the Biological: Open-Sourcing Life Science, from Synthetic Biology to Garage Biotech.” It’s a fantastic talk.  Sophia has been engaged in non-institutional biology at least since 2003, when she worked for Natalie Jeremijenko on the singular art / activist Biotech Hobbyist Magazine, and in her talk she presents her anthropological insight into DIYbio, richly contextualizing the social causes and effects of the...

An iPhone Microscope... Imagine this: You’re exploring the salt ponds of San Francisco, and notice the water isn’t clear — it’s red! You dip a piece of plastic into the water to get a sample and notice lots of small little particles in the droplets. Then you pull out your iPhone, magnify the sample 100 x and snag a photo. Doesn’t look like anything familiar but… Maybe #diybio on Twitter would know? “#diybio, I’m at the salt flats outside San Francisco. Any idea if I’m looking at something like red tide, or is this just algae?” – DIYbioGuy,...

The new DIYbio Forums!... Want to chat with other members of the DIYbio community? Come check out the DIYbio Forums! Categories: Come talk about your latest project! Getting Started – What is DIYbio? What should be my first experiment? General – News, speeches, and other talk! Ongoing Projects – Let’s hear about your projects and results Safety - Where to get and give advice for responsible and safe practice Regional Groups - DIYbio SF, Boston, Seattle, New York! To get started, just register, upload a smiling picture, and introduce yourself! For those of you who tweet, link...

DIYbio New York: DNA Extraction Party... The DIYbio New York group had a “DNA Extraction Party” at ConfluxCity 2009. What’s that? Check it out at the DIYbio NYC blog A perfect day for making DNA in NYC Tito

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Gra... The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is now accepting grant proposals for Round 4 of Grand Challenges Explorations, a US$100 million initiative to encourage unconventional global health solutions. Anyone can apply, regardless of education or experience level. Grant proposals are being accepted online at http://www.grandchallenges.org/explorations until November 2nd 2009.

A Quick Guide to Teaching R Programming ... A great article in the recent PLoS Computational Biology – freely accessible to all!  Additionally, check out: OpenWetWare’s topic on “R”. A Quick Guide to Teaching R Programming to Computational Biology Students by Stephen J. Eglen*, Cambridge Computational Biology Institute, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1000482 The name “R” refers to the computational environment initially created by Robert Gentleman...

A Mention of DIYBio in the Commercial De... The following is a cross-post from the 88 Proof Synth Bio Blog. “BIO hosted a round-table discussion with leading-edge companies on technical and commercial advances in applications of synthetic biology. Speakers in the session represent leading firms in the field, Amyris, BioBricks Foundation, Verdezyne and Codexis.” This industry-centric conference call prominently mentioned “hobbyists doing Synthetic Biology in their garages.” The Progress in Commercial Development of Synthetic Biology Applications podcast can be listened to at this link. BIO is...