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Hacking With Synthetic Biology
blackbearnh writes "If you've gotten tired of hacking firewalls or cloud computing, maybe it's time to try your hand with DNA. That's what Reshma Shetty is doing with her Doctorate in Biological Engineering from MIT. Apart from her crowning achievement of getting bacteria to smell like mint and bananas, she's also active in the developing field of synthetic biology and has recently helped found a company called Gingko BioWorks which is developing enabling technologies to allow for rapid prototyping of biological systems. She talked to O'Reilly Radar recently about the benefits and potential dangers of easy biological design, why students should be hacking wetware, and what's involved in setting up your own lab to slice genes."
http://openwetware.org/wiki/Main_Page
This is the info sharing site for bio-hackers. Has everything from courses for the gene-script kiddies to protocols and other neat stuff. It's a better resource then the corporate site for those who want to know about it.
I can't say I'm terribly concerned about your proposed scenario. Unlike computer programming, bioengineering takes quite a bit more capital. Let's say you want to insert a protein into a bacteria - first you need to create the cDNA (you'll need a PCR machine or water baths (heh), expensive enzymes, the ability to pipette uL amounts, random primers, and a source of mRNA), then you'll need to isolate the protein's cDNA, next you'll have to clone out the gene (do you have access to a sequencer?), and put the gene in a plasmid that will express the protein (you'll have to buy one as you won't be able to reasonably make one). Let's see, you'll also need amp/kan, LB plates, a warm room, some media, and a shaker (unless you want to use sub-sub-optimum conditons). After this, you'll have to express your plasmid in the bacteria - did I mention that, typically, bacteria that express the protein will be at a selective disadvantage? Wait, you want to stably integrate your protein into the bacterial genome? That's a whole, more difficult, can of worms. So you want to modify a virus... where are you planning on getting the viral vector? What type of virus are you attempting to modify? Some are very difficult to work with. Making one can be a PhD thesis in and of itself. Infecting eukaryotic cells is not easy either - a lot of money is being spent on trying to increase the efficiency for anti-cancer therapy.
Unlike computer programming, these aren't projects that people are (realistically) able to do in their basement. Often we give the simplest experiments (just the cloning part), where all the reagents are present and the knowledge base is easily available, to summer students - and often times they fail. I don't worry about the rogue 'biohacker' next door (all the more power to them - maybe they'll learn something about science). I worry about rogue governments - particulary ones that believe God will protect them.
I like how she responded to this issue with the word 'democratization'. She doesn't seem to be so worried about some crazy terrorist getting access to this technology, as governments monopolizing it for biowarfare development. And I'm inclined to agree that we should be just as worried about the latter as the former. A few links about this scientist/entrepeneur:
Her Bio
Forbes article - DIY Life
MIT TechTV Video - DIY Biology