The Weekly DIYbio link fountain of science for children

The DIYbio google group is fast approaching 2000 unique posts.  To highlight some of the more interesting conversations and links, we’ll post a weekly summary on Friday.  We’re hooking up a drinking fountain to the firehose.  So, without further ado – the Week of 30 Jan 2009 in review:

• Doug Ridgway brought some attention to Invitrogen’s 3-step Clonewell Electrophoresis system (thread)

• Kay Aull and Mac Cowell told New Hampshire Public Radio about DIYbio (thread)

• Kay Aull, Jason Morrison, Mac Cowell, and Ben Peterson experimented with Gel Electrophoresis at Willoughby & Baltic

• Bryan Bishop shared a website with a comprehensive (200+) list of Hacker Spaces around the world (thread)

• John Cumbers pointed out some great biochemistry tutorials, particularly J Chris Anderson’s Bare Bones Biochemistry. (thread)

• Professor George Church had an article in SEED about Safeguarding Biology, which Jason Bobe mentioned in response to a Post for Reactions by Roger Brent (topics: BioSafety, BioSecurity, and Responsibility).  (thread)

• Members of the community recapped their interviews with the Monitor 360 consultants, and have a long discussion about the pros and cons of “Biohacking” as an adjective. (Tito, Marnia, Meredith, Andrew, Kay

• Jonathan Cline found a video of a biology + electronics hacking project that measures the health parameters of beehives and reports it to the web. (thread)

Happy (very) belated New Year, DIYbioers! I want to recount some of the exciting high points of the past few months, and share some hopes for 2009.

Local groups outside the Boston area are sprouting up and folks are getting some quality kitchen table time, as my friend Justin calls it. DIYbio Seattleites had their first meetup, about which Sandy Porter published an excellent article, and Bay Area DIYbiologists met up in San Francisco. If you are looking to start or join a local group, add an entry to the Local Groups page.

There’s been a surge of new interest as several articles and blog posts were published. We’re more than 500 members on the mailing list, which is very exciting! I had an idea that there were hundreds (if not thousands) of enthusiastic amateur biologists out there, and it’s great to see them coming together. I’d love to see a DIYbio conference during 2009, and get to meet all you DIYbioers in person. CodeCon 2009 will be another great chance to do just this, with a new Biohack! track that is currently in open CFP.

Several projects have also sprung up and are progressing in earnest, including building a melamine biosensor, probiotics that produce vitamin C, cheap and open source biology tools, and the seeds of one or more DIYbio iGEM teams. Hardware projects have sprung up as well, with an open-source turbidostat, the Gel Box 2.0 project, and integration/UX research going on with Project SmartLab.

The BioWeatherMap project has enjoyed quite significant progress, and will soon become a PersonalGenomes.org project in collaboration with DIYbio. This is great news, and I hope to see the BioWeatherMap take off over the next few months.

I’m really pumped about this, and look forward to seeing all of the fantastic projects come to fruition!

Six DIYbiologists met at Frjtz in San Francisco on Saturday, January 19th for the first time. Here are some new ideas we tossed around:

DIYbiologists John, Spencer, and Marnia enjoy Frjtz fries

1. BioWeather Maps Jason Bobe, visiting from Boston, introduced BioWeather Maps. Imagine a day in April, DIYbiologists from all around the country swab crosswalk buttons in their town with a Q-tip. Each sample might contain 10 or 100 different bacteria. How do swabs from the subway in Boston differ from swabs from a hospital in San Francisco? Jason Bobe wants to find out.

2. Every Orchid is a Clone Marnia Johnston proposed a bio-art piece – take samples of orchids worldwide and show that the most popular orchids are all clones of eachother.
3. Open Gel Box 2.0 Tito showed off the schematic for a DIY kit to make your own bigger, badder, gel electrophoresis chamber

For our next meeting, we want to get our hands in some actual wet work. Marnia and Spencer are investigating public labs, as well as having DIYers teach hands-on biotech classes at the museums/science centers in SF.

Tito Jankowski: Open Gel Box, “let’s make all biotech equipment pocket sized”
Jason Bobe – BioWeather Maps, visualizing genomes
Noah Flower: the Monitor research group
Marnia Johnston: Artist, wants to start a bioart project to show that all the orchids in the world are clones of each other
Spencer Pearson: Quilt kit entrepreneur, knows about licensing, wants DIYbio as a hobby
John Cumbers: NASA AMES, all around cool guy, wants to use biotech to live forever and colonize other planets

By Tito Jankowski