Do it yourself genetics: Rise of the home biohackers

[TechBear_Seattle]

Do-it-yourself genetics

The Apple computer was invented in a garage. Same with the Google search engine. Now, tinkerers are working at home with the basic building blocks of life itself.

Using homemade lab equipment and the wealth of scientific knowledge available online, these hobbyists are trying to create new life forms through genetic engineering -- a field long dominated by Ph.D.s toiling in university and corporate laboratories.

In her San Francisco dining room lab, for example, 31-year-old computer programmer Meredith Patterson is trying to develop genetically altered yogurt bacteria that will glow green to signal the presence of melamine, the chemical that turned Chinese-made baby formula and pet food deadly.

"People can really work on projects for the good of humanity while learning about something they want to learn about in the process," she said.

The article continues at http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/393686_dna26.html

[lostnotforgotten]

1. This Is Troubling Because Of The Potential For Harm

For a dramatized reference, I would watch this very good TV show out of Canada called Regenesis.

http://www.hulu.com/regenesis

As a Canadian TV show the series could explore human issues that are mere hollywood wet dreams as regulated by the FCC.

[ixion]

2. oh yeah... this is going to work out well...

nothing like releasing some genetic mutations into the gene pool to really stir up the fun.

I'm all for home-based innovation, but screwing with genetics is something that needs to be handled more carefully than most. We aren't even close to comprehending the long range implications. Unfortunately, that's never stopped us before.

[n2doc]

3. this does not sound good

Hopefully they will fail in their attempts and quit. I think having this ability in the hands to the public is akin to having the ability to make nerve gas or radioactive weapons, not a good thing at all.

Would be we cheering if someone wanted to build a home scale nuclear reactor to power their house?

[TZ]

5. Indeed.

This is troubling. Where are the biosafety cabinets to keep things from escaping from the environment? What happens if people expose themselves to pathogens that become infectious?
Considering how much containment a lab has to do just to work with YEAST, this is very troubling.
Most of these people have little experience in biology as well.
What irritates me is the whole oh well Apple started in a garage thing..Computer technology and genetic engineering are NOT compatible! Why don't we just let people screw around with anthrax while we are at it!
:sarcasm:

I've worked long and hard to get where I am and these fools who had a couple of classes in college and read teh internets believe make them qualified to do this infuriate me! :grr:

[anigbrowl]

7. I bet you'll be twice as infuriated if any of them get a patent out of it

I can think of some interesting possibilities.

[Orrex]

11. Pssst! Did you know that Turtlensue gets $5.00 every time a doctor administers a vaccine?

Is that a sweet deal, or what?

[TZ]

12. I don't give a damn if they get a patent or not

I DO care that they are fooling around with potentially dangerous shit...If it was just them they might hurt I wouldn't be worried.
You DO know there is a very good reason biotechs spend TONS of money and time training people to work in lab environments right? And that there are federal oversights of this lab? Who the hell will be monitoring these people to make sure they aren't being honest in their research? Who will be checking their equipment to make sure its calibrated correctly?
Once again...trained scientists..bad...amateurs who have no clue and could actually do environmental damage..good.
Sick of the bigotry of trained professional scientists on this board.

[TechBear_Seattle]

6. Actually...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=228&topic_id=43037

[Tutankhamun]

4. Disaster waiting to happen

[Jellogum]

8. Ugh, the Hollywood effect, when uneducated fear the unknown.

“You” is used to denote the average person overly worried about the imagined threat of genetically modified organisms, as well as those who yoke these people for political/personal gain, folks who do not want/attempt to season their concern with the maturity to actually learn about a very complex and fascinating topic.

This opinion piece of writing is open source.

Well, molecular scientists are certainly not unfamiliar with the mob and their fear of the unknown.

Most modern high schools now regularly conduct genetic experiments for their students.

Most all bacteria are harmless. Eat yogurt.

Genetically modified organisms usually will die very quickly, as most mutations do not correlate to a reproductive advantage.

Bacteria can mutate on their own, and don't need people to mutate. Paramecium do a fascinating thing when facing death, that is they randomly shuffle their DNA in an attempt to produce a protein that creates a defense from the unknown: lack of food, poison, temp...

Activities to succeed with experiments require a modest understanding of the molecular process, a complex system that would likely baffle the average business administrator running a college. It is nearly impossible that a knob will "accidentally" achieve any success, with genetics, let alone the ending of a Hollywood biological horror movie.

Molecular scientist are only doing what nature does everyday, in the wild, and if these folks described to you what is actually happening in your stomach, you would likely freak out.

Listen to your doctor when you are told to take your antibiotic as described, because if you don't you will do more harm to society than a thousand thousand Bio-hackers. Why? Because your body (and millions of other sick people) actually become a test tube that can select for a pathogenic bacteria that becomes resistant to your medicine. Are you ready to make it a crime to not take your antibiotic as prescribed? Have you heard of Multiple Resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus? Are you ready to go to jail for not taking all your meds, because this, and over prescription, and poorly administered prescription, has more to do with the real advance of actual MRSA disease more so than some at home scientist who is trying to find a new antibiotic and/or discovery.

Science came from the garage and slammed head on into the wall of the mob, their fear, their religion. Scientist have always been trashed by the public, and its only recently (last 100 years) that scientist haven't been so shamed, in mass, by the common person as being a heretic, a witch, a monster. Why did Darwin wait so long to share his research? Who is Lewis Pasteur? Because of science we have modern medicine, machines, electricity, ...

Who knows, maybe some bio-hacker will find a rare bacterium that happens to live in their backyard, in the soil, and discover the latest and greatest antibiotic.

Did you know bacteria can live in your car's gas tank?

There are laws that already regulate how to handle bugs identified as pathogenic. Molecular biologist know these rules. It would be nearly impossible to learn enough about molecular biology to conduct an experiment and not read, or become aware of, safety protocols. People should feel safe as there are existing bio-hazard protocols, and bio-hackers must follow these guidelines; who knows, maybe a winning lottery ticket will allow a bio-hacker to develop a modern research facility, creating jobs for their local economy.



Biological weapons don't work very well, because the dead can't act as a vector. Symptoms reveal who is sick and this allows for the quarantine of the sick before disease spreads. It's complicated... Ironically, for those who fear the bio-hacker, when a disease becomes too problematic, the fearful will likely appeal to any person who might offer a hint of hope at discovering a cure, hence, encouraging bio-hackers...

The loss of horizontal research due to unjustified and overly burdensome regulation will do more harm than the imagined harm of a bio-hacker. It will diminish the total number of people working on a problem, hence fewer eyes looking for answers.

A law, a regulation, will only effect the lawful, and a person bent on malicious intent will not follow the law, so any law will only stop legitimate research that could likely help society.

A person with a bath tube, infrared light, caged cat/rat/dog, and a blood born pathogen is very dangerous, as the fleas can be harvested to spread disease and the blood dried to produce spores by exposure to air. A farmer can inadvertently harvest disease causing stuff. A drum maker can die from stuff. A leather worker can die from stuff. All this stuff is real and actually happens in the wild, everyday life, but mostly in lands where modern agricultural methods are not employed, not from bio-hackers. What can we do about improving agricultural methods in developing countries, to discourage stuff? Stuff is dangerous. Freak out about stuff.

How about this for a scary thought: high production milking cows tend to develop chronic sores on the utter from being hooked on machines everyday. These sores require daily high doses of antibiotics, the effect of which selects for nonpathogenic intestinal flora that become highly resistant to the antibiotics and within an anoxic inclusion within the intestinal wall, a pathogenic staphylococcus inadvertently absorbs a plasmid that was by chance released by the apoptosis of a nonpathogenic bacterium, or perhaps a chance transfer, and then the cow becomes sick due to a staph resistant bug. More likely, the daily use of the milking machines and the chronic sores harbor the staph bug and this controlled colony eventually becomes resistant to the cow that is heavily dosed with antibiotics. It is amazing what we do so that the cow can keep up with an unnatural milking routine. Or maybe, the antibiotics pass through the utter and into the milk, and the human who drinks the milk inadvertently turns their stomach into a test tube that selects for an antibiotic resistant bacterium. Who knows, not many people are testing or studying this, so its just conjecture and imaginative thought...

Just because a person makes a discovery doesn't mean that it is true, or the complete answer. Science requires that results can be replicated in other laboratories, so please be careful when reading a news paper that makes a statement based upon one or two lab reports. A good scientist will wait for numerous labs and tests to confirm results, and some people don't believe anything that they can't directly reproduce in their lab...

Science can be weird. For example, a bicycle is dropped on an island with people who have never seen or taken a ride on a bike. The first ten folks to try the bike are very influential people of the island. Their attempts to ride the contraption fail, so it is declared that the machine is useless. Does this mean the bike is discovered to be un-ridable? Of course not, because we know it works, but on this island no person can figure it out in the first week. Then a child, who doesn't have any preconceived notion of how to solve a problem, figures by curious-accident how to ride the bike. So goes science sometimes...

Go ahead, freak out, scream about genetically modified organisms, share your ignorant fear on a subject, spend your money on stupid Hollywood films , and shot yourself in the foot by discouraging the very folks who may actually find something useful living in their back yard, and/or by using benign classical methods to develop a useful discovery, something that might per chance actual save your life someday, or ease a social problem, or improve the standard of living...

Regarding these recent bio-horror movie plots, here is a comparative horror movie plot: a ship of sailors sail off into the far distant ocean, and their ship falls over the edge of the world and into space. Oh, it's so scary, but wait, real science has proven that the world is round so it can't happen. Just because the movie creates a fantasy that suggests an event can happen doesn't mean that it must be true.

Be worried about nanoparticles being employed in products without proper testing to discern possible effects upon the living organism, as some of these particles are small enough to pass through cells and clog cellular mechanisms -- causing disease...

James Watson wrote a nice book for the layperson on DNA:

DNA: The Secret of Life.
by James D. Watson, Andrew Berry

[Odin2005]

10. Excellent post! n/t

[TZ]

13. These people think they can discover vaccines in their garage.

Want to tell me how a amateur is going to develop a vaccine without having access to infectious pathogens?
And you DO realize that molecular biologists have regulatory agencies they have to answer to?
Who do these people answer to? Again..regulation is a good thing. I'm surprised how many people on this board don't think that.

On edit: School laboratories also practice things like aseptic technique, have biocontainment protocols AND have regulatory oversight to avoid, contamination of the environment. People's houses do not. ugh. just thinking of people using their personal refrigerators to store both food and their little projects gives me a belly ache.

[Citizen Number 9]

16. So, what is your primary worry?

Home laboratory "accidents" or

facilitating intentional bio-mischief outside of a "regulated" laboratory?

[Hanse]

19. Edward Jenner discovered a vaccine in his barn.

:shrug:

[Odin2005]

9. Good! Bring on Open Source Genetics!

This biotech major likes!!! :woohoo:

[TZ]

14. You like unregulated science do you?

I've seen and heard about labs that ignore FDA regulations. Nothing good comes of it.
A few years in the field will let you see why this isn't a really good idea. (Psst--even everyday things like yeast can be a problem if handled incorrectly)

[Odin2005]

15. Yeast can be dangerous?

:wow: :wtf:

Now, I'm not saying there shouldn't be any regulation of this, I've always been a strong supporter of the regulation of biotechnology. My worry is that corporate lobbyists will make sure that such regulations benefit them and screw over small biotech companies

[Citizen Number 9]

17. You must not have any friends

that make Winter Stout....


:hangover:







:)

[eShirl]

18. one of these kids is going to make THC-producing yogurt one day

mark my words