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Amateurs Are Trying Genetic Engineering At Home
the_kanzure points out this AP story on amateur genetic engineering, excerpting: "The Apple computer was invented in a garage. Same with the Google search engine. Now, tinkerers are working at home with the basic building blocks of life itself. Using homemade lab equipment and the wealth of scientific knowledge available online, these hobbyists are trying to create new life forms through genetic engineering a field long dominated by Ph.D.s toiling in university and corporate laboratories." Reader resistant has a few ideas about how to use this sort of lab: "Personally, I'd like to whip up a reasonably long-lasting and durable paint made with dye based on squid genes that glows brightly enough to allow 'guide lines' to be daubed along hallway baseboards, powered by a very low trickle of electricity. Plus, a harmless glowing yogurt would make for a cool prank."
I mean, I love the idea behind it. But isn't there regulation on doing this type of research?
Restore the madness of youth's lechery
Your point is valid, in that most garage startups fail. For that matter, most startups fail, and a nontrivial percentage of the activity of large enterprises also fails.
However, it is still important to remember that some tiny garage startups do succeed, dramatically in certain cases. Obviously, being a garage startup isn't the golden road to riches; but garage startups, as a genre, are valuable. Particularly in our era of regulation, where concerns over liability, meth, terrorism, and whatever the fear of the moment happens to be, often lead to laws that assume that R&D only happens under the auspices of universities and corporations, and homes are just for consuming, this is important to keep in mind.
That said, though, the economic argument is not the only, or even the most important, argument in favor of garage based tinkering. The onus is not on garage based tinkerers to prove that they are valuable. Tinkering is their right, unless it can be demonstrated to be an infringement on somebody else's rights.
It will soon be banned, much as anything else remotely scientific at home is in the process of becoming.
Next, just having the knowledge will get you on a watched list.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Normally I have to preface my posts with "I am not a XXXX, but". However, in this case, I actually am a molecular biologist deeply involved in the synthetic biology community. Here are a few thoughts:
First, the amount of ignorance regarding genetic engineering and it's facets (such as GMO food) is astounding. Anecdotally, I've heard that a significant fraction of British folks polled said they would prefer DNA-free food. (Think about it until you realize the ridiculousness). People typically imagine we are trying to create hybrid organisms or bizarre clone armies or something, when it reality, it's just mixing DNA that encodes for a series of proteins you would find useful in combination. To make glow in the dark yogurt that responds to melamine would be fairly simple if you had the right set of genes: a melamine sensor that, when bound to melamine, binds to a specific DNA sequence (a promoter) that drives expression of a fluorescent protein such as green fluorescent protein ("GFP", a widely used fluorescent marker derived from a jellyfish). It's not difficult, and it's not unsafe. The vast majority of DNA and proteins are degraded rapidly in your stomache, so they are safe to eat (toxins, parasites, and infectious agents excluded).
Second, people underestimate how difficult it is to accomplish something genetically. Yes, the circuit logic above is fairly simple. Unlike electrical circuits, though, where you can control electron flow with wires there is no such spatial regulation of biological parts. It's very stochastic. One has to tune the concentrations such that the melamine sensor will strongly bind to DNA at the concentrations of melamine likely to be in food, without prematurely activating and freaking people out, while also avoiding being sued because it didn't activate when it should have and someone died. Once you get the sensor right, you have to then tune the promoter so that you get expression of GFP the same way-- no leaky expression causing permanently green yogurt, but enough expression when activated such that you can see it. I can build a simple circuit to drive GFP in the presence of melamine, but getting it commercially relevant is extremely difficult.
Finally, and most importantly, the regulations of these types of technologies are, well, 2 steps from insane. There are no regulations on the transport of DNA encoding some severe toxin, to list one example. Take botulism toxin: the DNA encoding it is well known, and short enough that one could order it directly from a DNA synthesis company. From there you can use PCR to make as many copies of it as you need. Then, put it in your bacterium of choice, produce a whole bunch, and purify it out. That entire process could be done with someone with basic college level biology and about $5k. Anybody can find the botulism toxin DNA on, say, NBCI (run by the NIH) and get to work. And there are NO regulations on any of the steps required to produce it. A person with practical experience could do it much faster. I could produce enough to kill my entire university, starting from scratch, in about 2 weeks, give or take, maybe faster
A second example is the definition of 'natural' when it comes to food. Any chemical produced in a flask, chemically, is considered artificial, even if it's molecularly identical to the natural flavor molecule. On the other hand, any synthetic flavor produced by bacteria in a vat is considered natural, as long as the sugar used to feed the bacteria is also natural. The food industry is spending billions trying to engineer bacteria to produce flavors in large quantities, because the average person will think 'all natural' means healthier or better for me.
A third example involves regulation of the types of bacteria used to produce flavors: if I randomly mutagenize bacteria with UV light until I find one I like, that's considered safe, even though I probably have no idea what mutations I've actually made. On the other hand, if I go in and, with ultra-precision, make a single, target
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
Parent's groups concerned by the threat of the narcofood menace, a product of rogue genetic engineers aligned with a radical pro-legalization agenda, hailed the establishment of the new FDA SafeSeed(tm) program yesterday. Monsanto spokesman Mike Smith said 'We believe that Monsanto's line of CertifiedSafe(tm) seed and seed compliance solutions offers responsible producers a proven means to align with FDA SafeSeed(tm) regulations at the industry's lowest certification cost.'"
They'd be happy to try, I'm sure.
I recall a lot of professional computer people saying these sorts of things about computers 35 and 40 years ago
Yeah, whereas these days, anyone can have a processor manufacturing plant in their garage!
You just got troll'd!