Nature Article + Nature Editorial on DIYbio

[Jason Bobe]

Two articles published by Nature today related to DIYbio:

Heidi Ledford. Garage biotech: Life hackers. Amateur hobbyists are
creating home-brew molecular-biology labs, but can they ferment a
revolution? Nature 467, 650-652 (2010) | doi:10.1038/467650a
(Published online 6 October 2010)

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101006/full/467650a.html

Editorial. Garage biology: Amateur scientists who experiment at home
should be welcomed by the professionals.
Nature. Volume 467: p.634 (07 October 2010) doi:10.1038/467634a

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v467/n7316/full/467634a.html

Luckily, (1) both are free online and (2) I think these two articles
mark something of a turning point for DIYbio in terms a balanced
perspective about the phenomenon.

Thanks,
Jason

[Joseph Jackson]

Thanks Jason, print them out while you can, LOL.

Looked like a better tone I agree. Who did that second Editorial? I
missed it actually and I didn't see the author listed just now speed
reading it.

My take away from today's article: Armpit Incubation, haha. Just the
image we were looking for to symbolize that DIY spirit. Garage Bio:
The Armpit of Science??

There is a whole other line I could continue down here but I am
stopping now and will joke later tonight at the QS meetup at Autodesk.
See any SF locals there.

[Andrew Barney]

There was one or two articles a month or two ago in the GEN magazine
relating to DIYbio. One was a really interesting article about the
dangers still present for DIY biologists and open source biology. I
will try and see if they are available online, but if not.. does
anyone want me to scan you a copy?

-Andrew

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[Guido D. Núñez-Mujica]

Editorials represent the institutional position of the publication,
therefore, they mostly go unsigned.

[Cory Tobin]

On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 12:50 PM, Andrew Barney <kee...@gmail.com> wrote:
> There was one or two articles a month or two ago in the GEN magazine
> relating to DIYbio.

http://www.genengnews.com/gen-articles/do-it-yourself-bioengineers-bedeviled-by-society-s-paranoia/3383/

[JonathanCline]

On Oct 6, 11:46 am, Jason Bobe <jasonb...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Two articles published by Nature today related to DIYbio:
>
> Heidi Ledford. Garage biotech: Life hackers. Amateur hobbyists are
> creating home-brew molecular-biology labs, but can they ferment a
> revolution? Nature  467, 650-652 (2010) | doi:10.1038/467650a
> (Published online 6 October 2010)

Great article.
I'm a little disappointed that their pictorial of a garage lab doesn't
include any automation devices. Liquid handling robots have
drastically come down in price and the ~10 year old ones have
proprietary software which is no longer supported, so labs are dumping
them cheaply -- write custom software (google "perl tecan" ahem self-
plug) and they work just fine, well, "fine" meaning they work as well
as they did originally (anyone who has worked with lab automation
should know what I mean).


## Jonathan Cline
## jcl...@ieee.org
## Mobile: +1-805-617-0223
########################

[Jay Woods]

This is thought is a new possibility around here. Where can one watch to
see such sales? And what is your idea of "cheaply"? Is it easy to come
up with the instruction set or is easy limited to Tecan.

[jlund256]

> I'm a little disappointed that their pictorial of a garage lab doesn't
> include any automation devices.  Liquid handling robots have

Well, great if you have a project that can make good use of them.
Having tried them, I found almost no use for them on small or medium
scale. They're touchy and inaccurate with small volumes, truly
hellish devices. I've used them for PCR and found pipetting by hand
(with a multi-channel pipettor) a better choice for thousands of
PCRs. I imagine that at around 100,000 PCR reactions using a robot
would become worthwhile.

Jim Lund

[JonathanCline]

On Oct 7, 4:38 pm, jlund256 <jlund...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm a little disappointed that their pictorial of a garage lab doesn't
> > include any automation devices.  Liquid handling robots have
>

> Having tried them, I found almost no use for them on small or medium
> scale.  

> pipetting by hand
> (with a multi-channel pipettor) a better choice for thousands of
> PCRs.

For low cost bio, I have been assuming that protocols could be created
which may produce lower yield with more work effort at much a lower
cost per experiment -- that is where an automated process might win
over a manual process. For example it seems most protocols now
involve use of a costly limited-use kit (with proprietary/patented
engineered reagents) as these kits boost reliability and yield in
single experiments. However if the sample is an unlimited volume
(which could be made via PCR in some cases), then yield may not be a
factor if specificity can be held constant across a larger number of
runs -- basically, repeat the same experiment many times, something a
robot is good at (well, kind of, they're supposed to be anyway) until
the noise can be measured and subtracted across all the results.

This is all theoretical and I'm not a biologist; it's just what I've
been assuming might be a great way to go. The industrial revolution
model, i.e. doing it by hand might result in better quality yet
automation can pump out more cars per day at far lower cost (with
results which may have great precision but horrible accuracy). Is it
possible? All of this would only hold true if such protocols (and
cheap reagents) exist. Kits were created to save humans time (among
other things) so protocols have been optimized to use them. Robots
have plenty of time to kill so protocols might be optimized to
leverage lots of robot time.