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Open Source Software Meets Do-It-Yourself Biology
destinyland writes "This article profiles a growing movement — DIY biology — that's made possible in part by open source tools. Using programs like BioPerl and BioPython, DIY biologists write their own code (computer and genetic), designing their own biological systems and altering the genome. A protein-folding simulator, Folding@home, is now the most powerful distributed computing cluster in the world, and as the movement evolves, cooperatives are also springing up where hobbyists pool resources and create 'hacker spaces' to reduce costs and share knowledge. 'As the shift to open source software continues, computational biology will become even more accessible, and even more powerful,' this article argues — while intellectual property and other bureaucracies continue to hobble traditional forms of research."
DIY Biology sounds pretty dangerous.
As long as the instructions it comes with are better than Ikea's...
...Folding@home, is now the most powerful distributed computing cluster in the world...
A Distributed Cluster? *Head Asplode*
Do it yourself biology??
I prefer "do it with someone else" biology...
If I had a nickel for every time I had a nickel, I'd be richcursive!
Awesome article. Our team has embraced the use of the R Stats package in our environmental assessment tool. We were sick of the COM object library to connect modern .NET tools to our tool so I decided to build a .NET wrapper for R. Still in early development but it works for us. We decided to release it under GPL for everyone to use. I think the title of article could read something like "Biologists take programming into their own hands" which is what I was forced to do during my MSc. and now once again in my position at U of S I find myself hanging out with the computer scientists a little bit too often.
From the title I was looking forward to the news that I could DL the opensource software, get my PC hooked up to a robot arm and a webcam, and have it do my appendectomy.
sadly, i mostly encounter uncooperatives
this leads to do-it-by-yourself biology
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The wife and I have been doing DIY biology for years and we have 3 kids and 3 grandkids to show for it.
coming to a upper respiratory near you.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on