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The Spread of Do-It-Yourself Biotech

Posted by Soulskill on from the not-just-for-terrorists-and-governments-anymore dept.

zrbyte writes "Are you an electronics hobbyist or a garden shed tinkerer? If so, then move aside, because there's a new kid on the block: the DIY biotechnologist. The decreasing price of biotech instrumentation has made it possible for everyday folks (read: biotech geeks) with a few thousand dollars to spare to equip their garages and parents' basements with the necessary 'tools of the trade.' Some, like PCR machines, are available on eBay; other utensils are hacked together from everyday appliances and some creativity. For example: microscopes out of webcams and armpit E. coli incubators. Nature News has an article on the phenomenon, describing the weird and wonderful fruits of biotech geek ingenuity, like glow-in-the-dark yogurt. One could draw parallels with the early days of computer building/programming. It may be that we're looking at a biotech revolution, not just from the likes of Craig Venter, but from Joe-next-door hacking away at his E. coli strain. What are the Steve Wozniaks of biotech working on right now?"

14 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. Just great... by KarrdeSW · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Now I have to worry about the my idiot roommate engineering a virus that'll cause the zombie apocalypse?

    1. Re:Just great... by interkin3tic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You should be more worried about your idiot roommate not washing his hands and getting you sick the old fashioned way. It's unlikely that even if he tried, he could make a disease more lethal than what nature has produced before.

      By the way, those people who think HIV was created in a government lab seriously underestimate how cleverly made HIV is. It's way beyond our best evil geniuses.

    2. Re:Just great... by bhartman34 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's unlikely that even if he tried, he could make a disease more lethal than what nature has produced before.

      It's not the idea of someone trying to make a disease that worries me. What worries me is the idea of someone moroning it up and accidentally producing something dangerous because they don't know what they're doing. The well-meaning idiot scenario is almost certainly more likely than the evil genius scenario.

    3. Re:Just great... by wizardforce · · Score: 3, Interesting

      As a biologist let me say that that is ridiculous. It's like creating a highly efficient piece of malware on accident. However, back to the GP's post: it doesn't need to be deadlier than nature; nature after all, has evolved organisms that are overkill- it just needs to be mildly effective to be a problem.

      --
      Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
    4. Re:Just great... by IICV · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not very likely. Evolution is like a trillion monkeys hammering away at potential genomes; if creating one that was viciously deadly to humans were easy, it probably would have happened already. One more monkey hammering away at it won't change much.

    5. Re:Just great... by HungryHobo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      How many people do you know who accidentally tripped while coding an application and unintentionally programmed a virulent computer virus?
      Bio viruses are orders of magnitude more complex, it's exceedingly unlikely to happen by random chance.

    6. Re:Just great... by jbengt · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You a optimistically assuming that the "author" of the virus (software or bioware) starts from scratch. More likely they play with an existing virus and unthoughtfully modify it in a way that make it worse for people, even if also worse for the virus' purposes.

  2. Glow-in-the-dark yogurt? by migloo · · Score: 5, Funny

    Glow-in-the-dark slippers would be more useful.

  3. Re:BAD idea by durrr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What happens when your neighbor releases his new organism by accident?

    You'll end up with green flourescent beer and bread.
    Seriously though, microbes are not rabid dogs, most of them are not virulent, most of them don't live in humans, and even if they do they have quite a few problems before they can colonize you. And if you're to suffer from them they need to produce some kind of toxins. And if you're to wreak havoc with them you need to weaponize them, and if you're at this stage you've probably done enough to see a FBI-sponsored surge in the profits of the local take-away coffee chain.

  4. Fluorescent, not bioluminescent by Scrameustache · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'd like to point out that the ambiguous "glow in the dark" quality mentioned here refers to the green fluorescent protein (GFP), a protein which exhibits bright green fluorescence when exposed to blue light. This isn't the good kind of glow in the dark where it produces its own light, it's the inferior "black light makes it glow" variety.

    --

    You can't take the sky from me...

  5. Re:BAD idea by bhartman34 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Just as a quick clarification: I don't mean to sound anti-gun. Everyone has a legal right to own a gun if they want to (subject to certain restrictions). I was just pointing out that there are people who don't take it quite as seriously as they should. Regardless of whether you think guns kill people or people kill people, it's undeniable that a person with a gun can kill people, so guns should be treated with due care.

  6. Ultravision by gurps_npc · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The human eye contains rods and cones to see color. Rods detect light at 498nm frequeny, short cones peak at 420 (purple), medium cones peak at 534 nm (green) and long cones peak at 564 nm (red).

    But birds have cones that can see far greater. Some birds can see as low as 375 nm. This lets them see ultraviolet.

    How hard would it be to find the gene that lets birds make this kind of cone cell and add it to a human? Breed for UV colorblind birds, compare their DNA with birds that can see UV, sample the DNA and try it out on a monkey first.

    P.S. the human lens tends to block light at frequencies of around 380, so we might only be able to see down to 385 nm, but that is still a boost of 35 nm, greater than the difference between green and red.

    --
    excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
  7. Re:don't see the link by Hatta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You underestimate the amount of low hanging fruit left. And with the progress of technology, there's even more low hanging fruit now than there was 30 years ago. Yes, you need large grants if you're doing cutting edge research. But if you're doing something that's been ignored by researchers because it's not directly connected to a disease process, for instance, then you might find it relatively cheap to produce novel results.

    --
    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
  8. Re:Scary by durrr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What makes you think we can do better?

    Ignorance. Having no actual detail knowledge of the process of genetic engineering will make you assume that there's a single well known gene encoding for Spore-forming-antibiotic-resistant-universal-substrate-utilizing-bacterioviral-immune-system-bypassing-Death-plague.

    And they are right, every idiot will now be able to mix two ingredients together to create a pathogen so vile and soul-wrenchingly evil that the sun will go nova the very second that they open the lid of their petri dish. Really!