The International Genetically Engineered Machines Competition (iGEM) is opening to DIY teams next year. It’s grown from a small experiment with 5 teams in 2004 to the largest community and conference of synthetic biologists in the world (with over 200 teams competing in 2013). I’m on the organizing committee for the new track – the “Community Labs” track – and I’m terrifically excited about the opportunity the iGEM competition provides for growing DIYbio.

I was asked to make the announcement at the recent iGEM World Jamboree, and below you can read a rough transcript of what I said. But if you just want to details, here they are:

DIY teams:

• get the physical biobrick parts kit (DNA of over 1000 standard biological parts)
• pay the same fees (~$3000 + $450 / person)
• need two “PI” leaders (anyone can be one)
• need a legally-recognized company to host the team (start your own, or ask a public lab to host your team; the two PIs need to be part of the team company)
• compete amongst other teams in the DIY track to win the track prize
• compete amongst all the teams for other prizes, including the GRAND PRIZE
• can have members of any age
• can be any size

Running an iGEM project is a big job, there’s no doubt. But if you’re up to it, you can use the competition as a powerful organizing tool for recruiting talented scientists, engineers, artists, and biohackers to work together and as a motivating force to solicit funds from many different local and national donors.

If you’re interested in spending six months building and designing your own biological system with synthetic biology, think about starting or joining an iGEM team in 2014.

I’m planning on starting a San Francisco team, and I’m going to recruit from the local biohacker scene, as well as from the local biotechs, big internet companies, and research labs. I see iGEM as a beautiful way to bring together really smart people to figure out and do DIY synthetic biology.

For more info, look on the diybio@googlegroups.com list for iGEM threads or leave comments below. You can also email diy@igem.org if you have specific comments or questions for the organizers.

Good luck!
Mac

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(I gave shortened version of this talk (7 min in) at the iGEM 2013 Jamboree, excited and out of breath after sprinting over from the middle of a judging meeting. Not the pomp and circumstance I was hoping for – but it is more fitting for DIY I think.)

Hi everyone. First, I want to applaud all your amazing work engineering and building biological systems here in iGEM. It’s simply amazing. So. I’m Mac Cowell and terrifically excited to announce a new iGEM track – the iGEM Community Labs track. But before I give you the details, I’d like to just talk for a moment about how iGEM and DIYbio relate from my perspective.

iGEM is an engine for innovation, like the scientific academy and the free market. But in addition to the accolades of scientific publishing and the economic rewards of the free markets, the real motive force that energizes synthetic biology innovation in iGEM is powered by a simple desire by the participants to “push the technology” as far as possible – and to HAVE FUN. This is an intrinsic and separate motivation but just as a valid and important as a wish to advance science or make millions.

Innovating for the sake of innovation itself is an incredibly powerful force, and it’s what excites me – and you – about the opportunity iGEM offers to “push the envelope” of biological technology.

The worldwide community of “amateur biologists”, biohackers, citizen scientists, or otherwise “non-institutional scientists” are motivated in the same way. They want to push the envelope of biological technology. They want to, in general, increase the power of an individual to understand biological systems – “to understand things” – and to prototype biological designs – *to build things*. They ask why the tools we use as biological engineers – protocols and equipment and organisms and genes – are the way they are, and perhaps not simpler, less expensive, or just easier.

Like iGEM, the worldwide biohacker community thinks outside the box and innovates for the sake of innovation.

I was once an iGEM participant – in 2005. Over the following years, the I was continually amazed by the innovation at the edges of synthetic biology that iGEM stimulated. And most surprising of all, it was being done by you – undergraduates. Not teams of PhDs working for academic fame. Not companies motivated by profits. By you iGEM youngsters, driven by the simple obsession of inventing something *new*.

So in 2008, inspired by the community of iGEM biohackers – those kids inventing for invention’s sake, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with synthetic biology – I coined a phrase with my friend Jason Bobe in an attempt to name the community with similar ideals outside of iGEM. We named it “diybio”. That name was a pebble at the top of a mountain. And over the last 5 years, it seems to have caused a landslide. But the two of us just gave it it’s first little push.

But despite their fundamental alignment, the diybio & iGEM communities have not formally intersected – until now.

In 2014, DIY teams operating their own labs are invited to participate in iGEM. The fees will be the same as for other teams – roughly $3000 to register and $450 per participant going to the Jamboree. DIY teams will receive the part distribution and will compete with other DIY teams in the track, as well as being eligible for awards from the other iGEM tracks as well as the grand prize. In other words, a DIY team, like the teams in the other tracks, could be the ultimate winner of the competition. DIY teams are required to have two leaders – or “PIs” – who do not have to be accredited scientists, but who do need to be listed as managers or leaders of the company that runs the teams lab space.

If a team wants to form a new lab, that’s fine – they’ll just need to create an LLC or C-corp or other legal entity as an umbrella for their activities. Or they can ask members of an existing organization to act as the PIs of the team. Importantly, these PIs and the associated legal entity are what become responsible for the activities and behavior of the team – not the iGEM organization.

iGEM requires a large investment in time and money to participate, but its format as annual competition actually facilitates fundraising, recruitment, and general motivation to do something BIG. It provides a compelling vehicle to organize a team, a lab, and get a project done on time. Having observed the competition grow from 13 teams in 2005 to over 200 teams in 2013, I’ve noticed time after time how much easier it is for teams to raise money when they tell donors “we need this money to win! support us and the local community,” instead of “we need this money to do our science project – please support us and science!”.

In my opinion, the new DIY track could stimulate many new community labs and teams to form with great benefits to the diybio community.

Anyone can start a team, and for you, I have two critical suggestions. As the leader of the team, you’ll have two main jobs in the beginning, just like a CEO: 1) recruiting awesome teammates, and 2) raising money to support the team.

Start with recruitment first. Put together a talk or presentation about what iGEM is and why you’re excited about participating, then go to your local communities that might have awesome people interested in helping, and get them excited! Go to local biotech companies, research labs, retiree communities, schools, museums, hackathons, lightning talks, science nights, and any other venue you think might be a filter for smart, capable, motivated people interested in biohacking. You can use iGEM to build an amazing local team of talented scientists and engineers.

Once the team starts to come together, do the same roadshow at local businesses, asking for sponsorship. Tell them you’ll put their logo all over your tshirts and website etc. Try to get some grants from the city. Ask for $1000 from the awesomefoundation.org.

DIY iGEM teams in 2014 are a huge opportunity to build the strength and reach of DIYbio everywhere. I encourage you all to consider starting teams and using iGEM as a focal point for getting great people and real money involved in DIYbio.

More details about participating will be available at iGEM.org in 2014. In the meantime, please direct any questions or comments to diy@igem.org.

Get excited!
Mac Cowell

The Kojo Nnamdi Show invited a few folks from the DIYbio community to have a discussion about the amateur biology movement.  Appearing on the show was:

• David Rejeski: Director, Synthetic Biology Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
• Daniel Grushkin: Vice president and a founder of Genspace; Freelance Science Writer
• Jason Bobe: Co-founder of DIYbio.org; Executive Director of PersonalGenomes.org

More details about the program, or listen to the archived stream.

For those in the NYC area who are ready to roll-up your sleeves and learn new biotech skills, I received the following note from Ellen Jorgensen, President & Scientific Program Director at Genspace:

Genspace is repeating its popular Biotech Crash Course starting Sunday March 20th. It will run from 2PM to 6PM on three consecutive Sundays and cover all the basic techniques used to cut and manipulate DNA. This is a hands-on course where you will isolate DNA, cut it using restriction enzymes, amplify it using PCR, and clone it into bacteria.  The cost for the course is $300.  We have 12 slots available, with two at a special discounted student rate. Please let us know ASAP if you are interested, since we anticipate this session will fill up fast.

In case you missed the December 2010 launch party in Brooklyn, Nature Medicine takes a tour inside the new Genspace community lab and talks to co-founder Daniel Grushkin (video link):

One of the most intriguing features of their space is a big glass box where all the lab equipment lives (much of it donated from a bankrupt biotech company).  The lab is constructed from several sliding glass doors drawn from the vast supply of found and recovered objects that occupy several floors of the Met Exchange building.  When I visited in December, I asked the Genspace folks the obvious question: Why did you build your lab in a glass box?  I learned that they had help from the (wonderful) Met Exchange owner Al Attara, who asked them for some basic requirements and they said “well, for starters, we know we want our lab to be open and transparent…”  They came back to the space a few days later, and, voila!  Lab in a (glass) box!  Made from sliding glass doors!

Read more about Genspace at their blog or follow them on twitter @genspacenyc.  See also the nice profile piece of Al and his Met Exchange in the nytimes.

Charlie Schick is an ex-scientist and a determined practical microbiologist. He writes about science, media, and other lofty subjects at http://molecularist.com.

Recently, I’ve been prowling the aisles of liquor stores and supermarkets reading labels of fermented foods, looking for new cultures to use. Am I violating any copyright?

Back in June, the DIYbio folks in the Boston area had a fun meet-up on yoghurt making, led by Vaughn Tan. One thing that was brought up but we really did not discuss was the copyright of culture strains found in yogurts. Mac asked if there were legal ramifications to using strains taken from commercial yogurt.

I remember a time when it was hard to find commercial products with live cultures, for example beer or yogurt. Beers were pasteurized (ugh) or, later, filtered to remove live cultures. And in the 90s, I remember Stonyfield’s as being the only “widely” available live yogurt.

But now it seems almost all yogurts have live cultures (though not necessarily with a rich set of bugs – some seem to have 1 or 2 instead of the usual 5). And I was impressed with my local liquor store carrying a wide range of beers with live yeast, such as lambics (fermented with a complex collection of wild yeasts and bacteria) and a breton beer, that caught my eye because it was made with two yeasts.

When I need to, I start my yogurt cultures with a starter taken from a commercial yogurt, such as Stonyfield’s. And I’m considering pitching (inoculating) my next beer batch with the two yeasts of that breton beer.

Is this “fair use”? If I give the culture to someone else, is that piracy? And what if I start selling my product?

And how can anyone prove it is their strain? These bugs are easily available, and most are naturally occurring. Will commercial strains need to be fingerprinted somehow for copyright protection?

You can see where this is going: Who will be the RIAA-equivalent in this story, to crack down on infringement? Who will be the EFF– or Creative Commons-equivalent to promote openness? Will we have a Napster-like bug-sharing service, freely sharing strains among all sorts of practical microbiologists?

In the lab, there are usually rules in place to restrict the free sharing of strains or samples. But these are usually for recombinant organisms, where it is clear what was created. What about for naturally occurring organisms?

Open sharing of information is a cornerstone of DIYbio. Will the same freedom extend to the sharing of microorganisms, especially if those microorganisms come from a lab or commercial product?

I don’t have the answers. Do you?

Charlie Schick is an ex-scientist and determined practical microbiologist. He writes about science, media, and other lofty subjects at http://molecularist.com

Long ago, people discovered that not all food-spoiling processes were harmful. Indeed, people have harnessed fermentation, a spoiling process, to preserve foods – beer, wine, cheese, sauerkraut, cider, kimchee, yoghurt, and, of course, surströmming (you won’t believe what it is).

To me, humans have always been practical microbiologists: we probably settled down to farm barley for beer, one of the oldest pieces of writing is a recipe for beer, and it’s not surprising that early biochemists studied enzymes in the fermentation process.

For us DIYbiologists, making foods like beer or yoghurt offers a great way to learn sterile techniques, handling of microorganisms, and many of the principle of microorganism culturing – growth media, inoculation, and strain growth conditions.

I brew beer and make yoghurt. Making yoghurt is stupidly simple. Starters are available from any live-culture yoghurt found in the supermarket. And I use mason jars (usually from spaghetti sauce) for the fermentation.

Brewing beer from malt extract doesn’t require an inordinate amount of time or equipment. Brew shops have various strains of yeast you can use as a starter. And if you’re adventurous, you can capture natural bacteria and yeast to form a starter.

Do you ferment anything? Beer, wine, or cider? Do you use microorganisms for food production?

Silkworms have been engineered to produce a more durable silk by augmenting them with properties from spiders.  The applications of the transgenic silk include textiles, sutures and wound healing, and even new bulletproof materials.

(HT Christina)

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See also a recent paper on the miraculous spidersilk produced by “Darwin’s bark spider”, Agnarsson et al. 2010. Bioprospecting finds the toughest biological material: extraordinary silk from a giant riverine orb spider. PLoS One 5 e11234 doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0011234

Dr. Todd Kuiken is a research associate for the Synthetic Biology Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is collaborating with DIYbio.org on a project to ensure safety within the rapidly expanding community of amateur biologists.

If the “MAN” was just one man, dealing with new and exciting movements such as DIYbio would be rather easy. Unfortunately the “MAN” consists of numerous federal agencies ranging from the FBI to the EPA, all with different jurisdictions and oversight concerns. Add to that state and local agencies, neighborhood associations and your curious neighbor looking over the fence and the complexity of engaging with all of these groups becomes clear. The DIYbio community needs to take these agencies concerns seriously, as I think we are doing, and turn them into excitement over this new field of biology and the larger movement of citizen science as a whole.

As I began talking about DIYbio with various agencies a theme began to emerge amongst those who were tasked with “oversight”, for lack of a better word, of DIYbio. There was a general excitement about the community and the conversation frequently turned to “remember when science was fun”. While these various agencies have legitimate concerns surrounding the DIYbio movement, the conversations thus far have been positive and seem to be more about helping the movement move forward safely while encouraging more people to get “excited” about science again. By no means do I think this will be an easy task, but an exciting one as we begin to engage the larger public and move deeper into the caverns of regulations, local ordinances and address people’s fears and concerns about moving into the realm of citizen science. I believe strongly that if we follow three simple principles we can calm these fears and produce an environment where the DIYbio community can flourish and the larger citizen science movement can grow.

1. Turn concern into excitement
2. Make science fun again
3. If we engage them they will get it

I recently finished reading “The Radioactive Boy Scout” by Ken Silverstein, which describes the true story of a young man named David who over the course of his childhood became fascinated with DIYchemistry and by the time he graduated high school had designed and built a small nuclear reactor in his backyard (with a little help from a book published in 1960 called “The Golden Book of Chemistry”, long out of print and probably for good reason, but in short, has some pretty amazing experiments designed for the DIYer, including how to make chloroform!). In the end the EPA arrived, tore down his makeshift lab and turned his family’s suburban Detroit backyard into a Superfund site. This true story is an excellent example of how curiosity and people’s desire to explore science can both lead to pretty amazing accomplishments, from a technical standpoint, but can also carry with it serious safety concerns and potential over reaction by the federal government. I plan on writing future posts describing the significance of this story and how it relates to the DIYbio movement and the lessons we can take from it in order to better engage with the “MAN”.

Daniel Grushkin is a science journalist who has written for numerous national publications. He’s a cofounder of GenSpace, New York’s first community lab.

It’s been 25 years since Steven Levy came out with his seminal book Hackers, and we still can’t agree on a definition for them. Hackers are deft programmers and designers, they’re whiz kids who break into computer systems, they’re guys who wear leather overcoats à la The Matrix.

But let’s face it: in popular culture the term “hacking” is cool because it suggests a reversal of power. People who we thought were powerless turn out to be powerful, and those who we thought all-powerful end up weak (or at least silly). It’s cool when a 7-year-old blind boy figures out how to trick phone systems into giving him unlimited free calls by whistling at the right pitch. It’s cool when misfits take down a shady company by exposing their secrets (see Wikileaks or Lisbeth Salander).

It fulfills a fantasy we all have—that through moxie and smarts the little guy can upend the system. (I suspect that if you don’t consider yourself the little guy, then you don’t find it that cool.) But without the little guy on top, it doesn’t come off. Case in point, when China launches a cyber attack on the Pentagon, or when a government agency hacks into the little guy’s computer, it’s not that cool. Actually it’s scary.

I’m not sure who coined the term biohacker, but it sounds super- f#@ing cool. To others it sounds super-f#@ing scary. Unpack the term, and I’ll show you why.

You and I are the little guys in the biohacker scenario, but who’s the big guy? Where’s the reversal? At first you might think, ‘Oh, it’s the corporations and universities that spend billions to do what we’re doing on the cheap.’ I don’t think so. Though we may one day democratize science, if anything, we operate in parallel to these institutions.

I think the phrase biohacking suggests an even bigger “big guy,” at least it does to the popular press and culture-at-large. Hacking, at least in this context, assumes that the system has a purpose. When a hacker hacks a system he subverts its original purpose for his own. The little boy takes a system designed to trade telecommunication for money and makes it free. The misfit takes a system originally meant to secure information and turns it into a system that reveals information.

Similarly, for many when you use the term biohack, embedded in the notion is that biology has a purpose, that the designer (presumably God) created it to fulfill that purpose, just like the phone company or the security system. To hack it is to somehow subvert the design, and through it, supplant the designer (again, presumably God). Now granted, if you took an insider’s view of the term “hack” this would all seem preposterous. But look at this graphic from The Economist illustrating the creation of the first synthetic bacteria. That’s man playing the role of God in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.

And you wonder why some of the public sees us as dangerous (parables like the Tower of Babel follow thereafter). At the same time, for others it’s also the reason why “biohacking” seems so cool (in this case, fantasies of creating a more logical world follow thereafter). Because, in a way, it’s the ultimate reversal of power: Hello God, here comes mankind.

Replace the theological with a Darwinian lens and the term again degrades into nonsense. Why? Because “purpose” is a term that doesn’t apply to evolution. A firefly shines bright not because it was designed to, but because it found utility in a string of mutations. Life is a MacGyver, “purpose” only comes after the biological change is made. So if you put the gene to shine bright in another organism (which we do), you are not subverting what some might call “divine will.” You are, however, throwing your own purpose into that life. Whether that organism finds utility in it is up to the organism (and the conditions you set).

Back to the term biohacker: I’m not saying you shouldn’t use it. Go ahead. But when you do, be aware of the associations you’re drumming up. Personally, it’s not worth it because the associations just don’t fit my worldview.

The suits think you can’t do biotech out in the garage. But the suits are wrong.

Meet Eri Gentry, queen of the bio-curious. In 2009, after the recession hit and every biotech company around was going belly up, Gentry went shopping. She picked up over a million dollars worth of lab equipment for $30,000 (around £20,000), installed it in her garage and invited her friends over to play. And her friends invited their friends and pretty soon Gentry was at the front end of the DIY biology movement.

Read the rest of the article at Wired:
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-07/15/eri-gentry-garage-biotech-revolution

More information about BioCurious at: http://www.biocurious.org

Jacob Shiach over at opensciencefund.org has been organizing a t-shirt design contest. The proceeds are split between diybio.org and opensciencefund.org and the winning designer gets $100 and a free shirt.

Jacob says:

Everyone is welcome and encouraged to vote for the first DIYbio t-shirt until June 6th at midnight when the ballot will close and the winning design will be announced.

The Ballot is located at here.

For those that want to make sure they get in on the first batch pre-orders are available at a discounted $10 at etsy.com.

Here are some of the submitted designs:

p.s. the last is a design that is probably impractical to print by yours truly and was “submitted” on July 2, so it might not officially be in the running.

This month, Keegan Cooke brought materials to prototype several Microbial Fuel Cell kits he’s developing, I demoed my updated $50 arduino-controlled microscope, and Jason Bobe gave an update about the BioWeatherMap Project Alpha. He has actually got metagenomic data now.

Before the meetup, Keegan said

“I’ll bring some ingredients to put in the MFCs (soil, sugar, etc.), but I think it would be fun if you told people to bring some leftovers from their refrigerator (no more than a cup of it) and we’ll see who’s leftovers the microbes like the best (i.e. who’s leftovers generate the most power).”

What food or compost products will be converted into the most power? Can’t wait to find out. Keegan took the assembled MFCs back to his workshop for measurement. It takes a week or so for the anode’s environment to become oxygen-free, at which point the electrogenic microbes from the collected soil start colonizing the anode and “breathing” their electrons onto it.

Later, I hastily assembled the latest design for the two-axis computer-controlled slide holder. It’s designed to work with webcams that have been hacked into microscopes. Here’s a video:

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=11139943&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=00ADEF&fullscreen=1

More photos are available on flickr: mine, yours.

See you next time!

If we were to get a ton ($250,000) of money via grants and donations to support the community, what should we do with it?

How many of us have made recombinant DNA?

Are there more artists here than engineers?

If you are interested in the answers, drop by diybio.org/survey and contribute your responses. Anonymized, aggregate data will be published on May 1. The survey should only take 5-10 minutes.

Give it a shot!

Cheers,
Mac

p.s., if you are the kind of person who likes to be rewarded for doing surveys, email survey@diybio.org after you finish it and we’ll see about getting you a prize (free primer synthesis, or reagents, or artwork, or something like that).

p.p.s. interested in fundraising? email survey@diybio.org