Talk:CH391L/S13/DIY SyntheticBiology

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  • Gabriel Wu 16:55, 28 January 2013 (EST): Adoption curves would add a lot in putting DIY Bio in perspective with other well-known technologies.
  • Kevin Baldridge 16:57, 28 January 2013 (EST):This article really highlights some of the efforts that are already underway in at-home laboratories.[PopSci DIY Bio]
  • Catherine I. Mortensen 17:37, 30 January 2013 (EST): I think they're is always dangers with things like DIY.... My friend always plays this strategy game called Plague. The goal is to infect the world with viruses and diseases. It's just a game but the possibilities are out there.
    • Neil R Gottel 18:58, 30 January 2013 (EST):Pandemic is pretty fun, although you're trying to prevent the infections, not spread them :)
  • Benjamin Gilman 19:32, 30 January 2013 (EST): We talked about identifying canine perpetrators, but is there another example that anyone knows about where a DIY bio project resulted in an actual product or a significant basic science discovery?
  • Neil R Gottel 19:53, 30 January 2013 (EST): I was scanning the wikipedia page on DIY bio, and saw this: "DIYbio wants to revise the notion that you must be an academic with an advanced degree to make any significant contribution to the biology community." I appreciate this attitude, but is this at all realistic? Contributing to astronomy just requires a telescope, and contributing to open source programs just requires a computer, but the huge investment for a semi-decent bio lab seems to pretty much require that the person doing the experiments have some sort of qualification (now, whether colleges actually do their job in qualifying you is another matter).
    • Neil R Gottel 19:58, 30 January 2013 (EST): Also, just found this article in wired from 5 days ago about a cheap DIY cell-printer. Maybe we need one for our lab...
      • Jeffrey E. Barrick 20:52, 30 January 2013 (EST):Cool! I might want a smaller printhead for bacteria, but this might be a way to "print" a lot of microcultures.
  • Marco D Howard 20:06, 30 January 2013 (EST): Here is the video. I was talking about DIY neighbor hood labs. Dr Jorgensen also addresses the ethical side of synthetic biology. Here is the link to her lab Genspace