The Technium: DYI Garage Biotech
Kevin Kelly has a great post on DYI Garage Biotech at The Technium. It includes pictures of a Silicon Valley biohacking garage lab.
Biohacker's Garage Lab
The photographs are by Rob Carlson, author of Biology Is Technology: The Promise, Peril, and New Business of Engineering Life
So, if you have the will and you want to start hacking biological organisms the way hackers hack digital code, you can set up a lab of used equipment for relatively cheap (the lab in question includes two clean cell-culture hoods, an incubator, two robot sequencers and lots of software) and you can buy the enzymes, the media and the Genomic DNA and viral RNA prep kits simply by calling a 1-800-number with your credit card handy.
The guys in the garage lab are screening anti-cancer compounds and Carlson says, nonchalantly, they have mad skillz. They must if they’re that ambitious.
DIYbio Garage Lab in Silicon Valley
In Carlson’s post, he says
This sort of effort is where new jobs, new economic growth, and, most importantly, desperately needed new technologies come from. Garage innovation is at the heart of the way Silicon Valley works, and it is envied around the world.
Yes, admittedly, diybio/biohacking takes skills. And it’s not cheap… yet. But you can buy used lab equipment at LabX and other marketplaces, including eBay. There are – as of yet – no restrictions on buying solutions, enzymes, endonucleases, etc., and prices continue to plummet, as they should.
The guys who set up the garage lab (and Rob Carlson) prove it is not expensive and it can be done. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
Unfortunately, this also means that people who want to hack biology for nefarious purposes can do so relatively easily. Carlson spends considerable time discussing his experiences with Washington, where the Feds in general frown on these efforts and lump them all as potential threats. There is a PR problem there, but science has always had a PR problem.
I’ve never bought the argument that biotech is different. That it’s harder and more complex than digital hacking. It seems harder because 99% of the population doesn’t understand the scientific method, has never been exposed to more than high school biology, and the idea of sequencing an organisms genome would be as foreign as trying to hack into a multinational bank.
That’s OK. For those of us who would dare, the information and equipment is out there. And there’s nothing like necessity to drive the mother of invention because technology can happen at a grassroots level.
It’s only a matter of time before all kids will be hacking bio ($25 Genome Kits). I have a book project that I’m collaborating on with the brilliant Jeff Caldwell that explores this. But that’s another story for another post.
If you hadn’t seen this coming, then you haven’t been paying attention.
So, let the bio-hacking begin.
