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."

Comments

Hmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone should do something useful and recreate this.

Re:Hmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

A huge corporation buying legislation is anything but free market economics.

In absolutely free market, even the market and the freedom are commodities.

That fact is real and inevitable (although free market idealists consider it an intermittent and sporadic anomaly), it has nothing with human nature (and has everything with cybernetics) and it already provoked making of Marxism once.

However, as much as Marxists' criticism of free market is founded in facts, their proposed solution of removing of power from money only made power more violent and more unchecked, because ... power (oppression, violation of others' will) is primary, money is only secondary.

Money makes it possible and easy to conserve, store, save the power for later use. It facilitates and makes more economical the use (and brokerage) of power. Unlike rigid, static communist and feudal position-based distribution of power, money allows for almost effortless and instant changes in power landscapes.

Now, what we need to understand is that high accumulation of money is endangering the democracy. Money is like oil, weapons or food. It can subdue you. It wants to subdue you. The essence of money is the debt: if you have the money, someone anonymous owes you to do something for you in exchange for it. A hoard of money wants to become larger (to be invested and bring back interest): it means the debt tends to expand and business is all about accumulating others' debts in their possession. Back to Monsato, we can see that it is exactly their course of action: to fetch more serfs, more indebted, more tied farmers, and through consolidated control over agricultural production, wide social control through food control.

Unfortunately, I can't conclude this post with any firm recommendation for a solution to the problem.

I guess we all should make some sort of own battle chest savings for the purpose of getting together and influencing the politics and legislation to act in our aggregated interest, to counter the similar actions of businesses, their own way. Because, supposedly, there is only so much money in circulation and in hoards, and we all generate more debt cancellation every day: we do something and then we get payed for it. We should place enough of it on the counter side of the balance of power, to make system do as originally intended: for the people, not for itself, not for someone else.

Or, perhaps we should abolish the taxes completely and instead promote lobbying as voluntary tax: make it so that everyone votes with as much money as one pleases, with "vote" having attached a specific opinion that is being furthered. In present system, lobbying is used as "little force (donation money) steering the large force (tax-filled budget spendings)", it is just ... dorky!

Garage Credibility

[moniker127]

Just because a few computer companies started out as projects, that does not mean that everything someone starts in their garage is bound to be wildly successfull. I dont get why they must draw the parallels.

Is this legal?

[allaunjsilverfox2]

I mean, I love the idea behind it. But isn't there regulation on doing this type of research?

Minature pandas

[pomegranatesix]

If I could get my hands on some panda DNA, I'd genetically engineer a mini-panda about the size of a guinea pig or hamster for the pet market.
In one fell swoop, I will have saved a species from extinction AND become a billionaire!

Disclaimer: IAAMB

[imneverwrong]

Yes, I am a molecular biologist by training. This won't work. The reason genetic engineering is carried out in labs is because it requires expert knowledge of protocols, and expensive equipment. In TFA, one of the people interviewed is trying to insert a targeted florescent marker, and struggling. This is fairly trivial to do in the lab, but only with good understanding of basic principles, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gear and consumables, and tested/documented protocols. You can't build a space shuttle in your backyard, neither can you successfully build a recombinant bacterium that meets spec in your garage. Just because cells are squishy does not make this equivalent to software development!

thoughts from someone in the community

[rritterson]

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