DIYbio at Maker Faire this weekend in Sa... Want to see a gel box in action or extract DNA from your saliva? Come by the DIYbio booth at Maker Faire this weekend. DIYbio SF is in the main Expo Hall on Saturday and Sunday, ready to spark your imagination! I’ll also be giving a talk on  gasoline made from sugar cane, houses grown from trees, and chairs made of ivory — from 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm on Saturday, Stage B at the Maker Faire. Interested? Come on by! DIYbio In Action! Saturday + Sunday (May 30 and 31) San Mateo County Expo Center Maker Faire Website DIYbio Presentation Tito Jankowski 3:00 - 4:00...

DIYbio Salon at Noisebridge... We held the first DIYbio Salon this past Saturday at Noisebridge in San Francisco. Glofish fluoresce -- green, red, and orange! Among other topics, we chatted a lot about Glofish — the genetically modified zebrafish that fluoresce under blue light. Some of us are aquarium-lovers and others are molecular biology-lovers, so we wondered out loud about everything from how to best display glofish to the low level molecular biology that goes into creating modified zebrafish. We also got into other cool topics about interfacing computers and biology. Rachel from the Cyborg group...

DIYbio Boston at Cambridge Science Festi... Doing the infamous dna extraction If you’re in the Boston area, drop by the Cambridge Science Festival between noon and 4:00pm this Saturday, April 25, to visit the DIYbio table! We’ll be in the tent at the opening Science Carnival - see the Cambridge Science Festival’s schedule for details.

DIYbio interview on Food Chain Weekly Ra... Mac Cowell, Sandra Porter, and Meredith Patterson (who wrote her thoughts on the show) were in a fascinating discussion about DIYbio on the Food Chain weekly radio program with Michael Olson this morning. The audio will be available to download soon.

iGEM Closes Doors to Amateurs... How can amateurs participate in iGEM? - Several weeks ago the Director of iGEM (my old boss) asked me to drop by to chat. He basically told me iGEM wasn’t going to allow amateur teams for 2009, despite earlier statements to the contrary, for two reasons: 1. iGEM depends on the academic institution of each team to provide a safety framework for that team. Because there is no formal safety framework or guidelines or precedent for amateur teams working outside of traditional labs, iGEM is afraid of the potential safety liability and doesn’t want amateur teams to participate...

FAQtastic!... diybio faq at openwetware.org Bryan Bishop has herioically created a DIYbio FAQ (three cheers!).  In the interest of neutrality, I copied his latest version to OpenWetWare/wiki/DIYbio/FAQ today and I encourage everyone to edit that version mercilessly.  Otherwise Bryan will become the official keeper of the holy DIYbio FAQ flame and the canonical version will reside at heybryan.org - this may be a fine solution for now. The FAQ contains information on Getting Started with DIYbio, local DIYbio groups, Synthetic Biology, iGEM, videos, Keiki gels, and MiniFAQs on DNA synthesis...

DIYbio San Francisco - Glow in the Dark ... Step 1. Planning our experiment The pressure cooker shot out steam, like an enormous teapot. At over 200˚F, steam had just sterilized our liquid agar, the favorite food of growing cells. We’re on our way to make glowing cells with the Carolina Sciences “Green Gene Colony Transformation Kit” (aka E. Coli K-12 + a GFP plasmid). This first step for DIYbio SF was a long time in the making! Step 2: Josh measures and mixes LB agar At the beginning of March, Praveen and Marnia began working with Noisebridge, a local hackerspace, to put together a Lab Safety and...

This week in DIYbio!... Microfluidics, a competition for free sequencing, an abundance of ideas for cheap lab equipment both second-hand and DIY, and thoughtful discussions on the current state of public perception and the future of regulation have made for quite an interesting week in DIYbio. Projects Bryan Bishop and others experiment with Sharpies and glass slides for making DIY microfluidics. Why not sequence a genome? Sandra Porter suggests the idea and and Jason Bobe shares a writeup on a likely partner for this, Cofactor Genomics. No sooner does Jason suggest raising funds, and pledges $100...

Extract DNA from Strawberries... Yummy strawberries have lots of DNA Syndicated from thetech.org “Do-it-yourself Strawberry DNA” Strawberries, bacteria, humans—all living things have genes, and all of these genes are made of DNA. That’s why scientists can take a gene from one living thing and put it into another. For example, they can put human genes into bacteria to make new medicines. How do scientists take DNA out of a living thing? It’s not that hard—there are lots of ways to do it! You can follow the directions in the video below to get DNA out of a strawberry. Or you can follow...

This Week in DIYbio - Match 15, 2009 Edi... Howdy DIYbioers! Thanks for stopping by. Here are a few highlights from the past week: Discussions and happenings this week DIYbio in the Big Apple - The NYC DIYbio group had a meetup on March 9th, and has started a blog and YouTube channel. Basics of gel electrophoresis - Dan Heidel gives an excellent and readable rundown of the basics of gel electrophoresis. Biology forums - Ellen Jorgensen and Bryan Bishop shared a set of forums where anyone can ask technical questions about their work. Ellen recommended the (very active) forums from Biotechniques magazine, and Bryan shared...