Introductions

[J I]

Hello! I'm new, I thought I'd introduce myself. My name is Jose
Ignacio. I'm an undergrad doing biology at the university of chicago.
Anyway, science really lights my rockets and I always imagined myself
working outside of the institution a little just for the pure joy of
amateur discovery. It's great to find this community where we might
help each other get over the more tedious aspects of non-institutional
science so that we all can get down to working on more interesting
things.

I've had a few ideas floating around in my head for a while and I
think it'd be good to just put them out there to see if anyone is
interested in the same stuff or working along similar lines. First, I
wonder if we're only going to focus on doing genetic engineering and
the like, or if there's room here for other kinds of amateur biology.
A lot of interesting science can be done without having to manipulate
nucleotides (not that I don't love manipulating nucleotides, I just
think that we should be open to other kinds of work):
Of the amazing variety of microorganisms that exist only a tiny
fraction have been successfully isolated in pure culture. So there's a
vast wealth of bacteria, archea, protists, and fungi out there just
waiting for us to figure out how to culture them. All of these
organisms could have potentially valuable biologically active
molecules like useful enzymes or antibiotics, but thus far they have
gone unappreciated!
Another little project that I've been working on is making genetically
useful microbes not through genetic engineering but through selection.
Selection is surprisingly fast, we're just not as good as nature is at
coaxing organisms to enter new adaptive zones. The problem is that
nature has billions of organisms at its disposal while we focus on one
or two. I recently read a paper where someone used artificial
selection to select fresh water COMMUNITIES of organisms that produced
an ecosystem of lower pH. The same kind of artificial selection could
be used to produce communities of organisms that did things like
digest oil spills or produced methane. We should not forget that most
organisms don't do much alone, ecosystems are the real agents of
biochemical change!

So... yeah. Get back to me if any of this sounds interesting.

[Luis Fernando]

I like your ideas, I think this community needs to grow, maybe
collaboration tools, project management, wiki.

what do you think?

-lf

[OldYeller]

Thanks for the posting. I have been following [sort of] most of the
genetic engineering discussions in DIYbio and loving it. I concluded
[without investigating] that the thrust was cutting edge bio outside
of the mainstream, and there would be little interest in a section for
other kinds of amateur biology. My present fun is the biotic crust in
the desert area where I live. I found out about cyanobacteria and
became obsessed with microorganisms. I'm definitely interested in
your project. I'm really a biological beginner but I'm learning
fast.
Again, thanks for the post. My name is Jim Goodson and I'm a retired C
programmer.

[efer...@gmail.com]

Hey jim check out mit open courseware they have video lectures of the whole biology and genetic engineering courses!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

-----Original Message-----
From: OldYeller <jimgoo...@gmail.com>

Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2009 06:36:32
To: DIYbio<diy...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Introductions

[OldYeller]

Thank you. I am in the middle of a Berkeley video course on Biology
using an older (6th) edition of Campbell. I also use Wikipedia a lot,
of course.

[J I]

Good to meet you Jim. You know it's great that you're interested in
the stuff that's alive in your dessert area. The microorganisms there
must have all sorts of adaptations the withstand drying out which can
be useful for a lot of things like engineering hardier plants for the
desert. You could probably go and get a soil sample and see if there's
anything in it you can grow at home. Also, if you like cyanobacteria
you should just go and check out the wikipedia page on lichens.
There's some crazy awesome stuff going on in lichens, and they love
the dessert.

[Jim H]

J I,

I love dessert as much as the next guy (especially those involving ice
cream), but find the desert much too hot & dry for my taste. I'll
let the cyanobacteria & lichen take all they want :-)

[Mackenzie Cowell]

Jason Bobe and I have tried to articulate some of the different areas of amateur biology.  Our back-of-the-napkin list is something like:
- Constructive Biology (genetic engineering, synthetic biology)
- Exploratory Biology, aka Molecular & Macroscopic Naturalism
- Personal Genomics & Medicine
- Computational Biology
- DIY Hardware
- Safety, Ethics, Best Practices

I am thrilled to be seeing the discussions about exploratory projects such as the desert organisms, NYC aerobiology, and Jason's bioweathermaps.

Mac