Posts by Jason Bobe

On January 3, nine of us* from the Seattle area met for our first DIYbio meeting. Over lunch, we introduced ourselves and our passions, discussed some potential projects, possible labspaces, safety concerns, public perception, future meetings, and a host of other DIYbio-related issues. We’re going to try to figure out a suitable place to host our wetlab exploits; I’ll be contacting a few people at the University of Washington this coming week about using their facilities. However, there was also a lot of interest about working on the computational and informatics side of things, which would be really cool. Scott suggested designing a novel protein, which would be a computationally-intense task, but UW has a supercluster that we might be able get some time on. Another great idea for a project was to implement additional safeguards into an organism (suicide genes, exotic food source, etc), which would be practical for both safety’s-sake and also for favorable public response. We didn’t go into details with these potential projects though, and I think we’ll flesh these ideas out more at the next meeting.

Considering there were people that couldn’t make the meeting and likely many more who will want to join in next time, we decided the interest-level warranted a DIYbio-Seattle group. Don’t freak out! I know that earlier there was some worry that city-specific groups would splinter the DIYbio community, but this Seattle group is for organizing meetings, lab availability, and other local issues that shouldn’t be spammed to 426 people (and counting). Especially with all the traffic DIYbio has seen in the past few weeks, nobody needs an extra 20 messages about directions to a meetup.

All in all, DIYbio Seattle’s first meeting was a huge success! Sandy Porter blogged about it over at Digital Bio, if you want to read more. As for our second meeting, it would be cool to follow the footsteps of those before us and do a DNA-extraction party in a few weeks. It’s safe, fun, requires alcohol, and would be a great way to get more people involved. So thanks to everybody who showed up, and to the rest of the worldwide DIYbio community. This group really is a great bunch of people, and it’s awesome meeting others excited about homebrew biology, amateur science, and spreading this love far and wide.

-Alec Nielsen

*James Yang, Scott Kerr, Bryan Bartley, Ingrid Swanson, Randy Hall, Max Berry, Sandy Porter, Todd Smith, and me.

We had a great summer getting DIYbio off the ground. A suspicion that the era of DIY biology was upon us led to a kick-off meeting at Asgard’s pub in Cambridge only 5 short months ago. In the months that followed, we investigated simple DIY protocols like DNA extraction and gel electrophoresis, we hacked what we could, shared ideas about what the future might hold, and even managed to get a little press. There is even a group of DIYbioers springing up on the west coast. Yay!

So, what’s next for DIYbio? Come find out, share your ideas, and learn how to get involved on Thursday, October 16th from 7-9pm, in room 56-114 at MIT (see map). Everyone is invited! Yes, everyone! Bring new people! Let’s fill up the auditorium!

The evening will begin with a few short lightning-style talks on projects we’re embarking on for 2008-2009, including:

1. Public Wetlab (Mac Cowell): A lab where anyone can learn how to tinker with biology and get hands-on training in cutting edge techniques. Let’s work on a project for iGEM 2009 in this space. Let’s boot up the lab by on our own or partner with an existing school. And let’s set a standard of safety, responsibility and transparency for the bio-maker community.

2. FlashLabs BioWeatherMap (Jason Bobe): Flash mobs meet consumer-generated science in the new DIYbio initiative FlashLabs, where we’ll be pulling-off a new large-scale collaborative science project annually for amateurs and enthusiasts worldwide. First up: the BioWeatherMap. Ever wonder how the microbial communities living on cross-walk buttons in Boston compare to those in San Francisco, or Manhattan, or the cross-walk nearest your home? We’re going to find out and you can get involved. Self-assembly required!

3. Smart Lab (Jason Morrison): Hardware hacking lab instruments, large-format multitouch displays, and a physical computing interface with real-time sample tracking and data logging meets a beautiful and natural way for scientists to learn, research, visualize, and share their work. Intelligent and interactive protocol guides, intuitive data manipulation and transformation, and livestreaming your science to an electronic lab notebook are a few components of this cross-disciplinary project. And go open source or go home!

Would you like to present an idea for a DIYbio project or share your thoughts? Email us, or post a comment here! We have a couple of extra 5-minute slots available. We’ll also reserve time for discussion about DIYbio as a community and an organization, including issues related to openness and safety.

As molecular tools get cheaper, and the know-how for using them more widely distributed, I think we’re going to see a renaissance in science. The peculiar feature of this renaissance is that its going to take place outside of “science proper”, away from the universities which dominate now, and funded out-of-pocket by enthusiasts without PhDs.

The democratization of technologies will enable more people to do their own science: make hypotheses, design experiments, collect large data sets, and apply a mixture of reasoning and cloud computing to make discoveries. Perhaps we’ll see a multi-author journal article published written entirely by people without PhDs and no institutional affiliations. Although it sounds crazy, I’m not sure it is.

Today GTO pointed to a New York Times article about a few a high school students that were curious to know whether patrons of NYC restaurants and grocers were getting the seafood they ordered, or if instead, some foods were often substituted by others. So, they collected seafood specimens and sent them for genotyping. One quarter of the fish they collected were mislabeled. What these high school students were able to do is remarkable, and more projects like it will soon follow:

“What may be most impressive about the experiment is the ease with which the students accomplished it. Although the [genetic] testing technique is at the forefront of research, the fact that anyone can take advantage of it by sending samples off to a laboratory meant the kind of investigative tools once restricted to Ph.D.’s and crime labs can move into the hands of curious diners and amateur scientists everywhere.”

How far might the paradigm of DIYscience be extended? Could amateur biologists around the world organize around a grass-roots experiment, collect specimens, generate and share data, and make discoveries? What might that experiment look like?

-Jason Bobe