Turns out a lot of the coolest results in synthetic biology have been produced by teams of college students for less than $1500. See the iGEM competition http://2010.igem.org/ (and follow links to older competitions), order some biobricks from New England Biolabs http://www.neb.com/nebecomm/products/productE0546.asp , and check out the tutorials at http://syntheticbiology.org/ It's all open source, too.
The price of DNA sequencing and DNA synthesis are both dropping exponentially. It's a lot like the Homebrew Computer Club times in molecular biology right now...
Slashdot Mirror
Turns out a lot of the coolest results in synthetic biology have been produced by teams of college students for less than $1500. See the iGEM competition http://2010.igem.org/ (and follow links to older competitions), order some biobricks from New England Biolabs http://www.neb.com/nebecomm/products/productE0546.asp , and check out the tutorials at http://syntheticbiology.org/ It's all open source, too. The price of DNA sequencing and DNA synthesis are both dropping exponentially. It's a lot like the Homebrew Computer Club times in molecular biology right now...