IndieBB Campaign Survey; Help Appreciated

[Cathal Garvey]

Hi all,
I'm over halfway through the IndieBB campaign, and slightly below 25%
funded. Things aren't, if I'm honest, looking rosy. Consequently I'd
like to better understand what factors are most important to people in
choosing whether or not to support the project.

I could just put a query out on the list, but then people would feel shy
about responding publicly. So, I've dived into surveymonkey and made a
survey; I promise not to dig into the identities of respondants, I'm not
interested in *who* you are, just *what you think of IndieBB*.

So, if you could please spare a minute for my single-page survey and
help me better understand the diybio community's DNA-related desires:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PRFB6S5

Thank you all!
Cathal

--
Please help support my crowdfunding campaign, IndieBB: Currently at
24.2% of funding goal, with 24 days left:
http://igg.me/at/yourfirstgmo/x/4252296
T: @onetruecathal, @IndieBBDNA
P: +3538763663185
W: http://indiebiotech.com

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

To be honest, I don't think the problem is with any of the issues in your survey - I think your IndieGogo campaign just isn't flashy enough. Too much hard science, not enough cheap-and-easy cool factor. 

The Frank N. Foode kickstarter has almost reached its $10K goal, and that's just for a plushie! The Dino Pet project raised $168K, and all they're doing is designing a plastic bottle. The Glowing Plant project made half a million, not based on the strength of the science behind the project (although that definitely helped), but because they got people excited.

Obviously, the issue is not with the scientific content of your project, or its open source nature or whatever - it's in the whole marketing angle that you need for a successful crowdfunding project. Yes, I know, it rankles having to sell yourself that way - the project should speak for itself, blah, blah, blah. Welcome to crowdfunding reality...

I love your project, and I'll keep trying to drum up more support for it. But if worse comes to worst, you can always regroup and rerun the campaign again some other time. That's actually a fairly common strategy on IndieGogo.

Meanwhile, let me leave you with some resources on how to milk the most out of a crowdfunding campaign:

Slava Rubin of Indiegogo, offers advice for running a successful online crowdfunding campaign.

How We Crowd-funded $484k to Make Glowing Plants

Hacking Kickstarter: How to Raise $100,000 in 10 Days (Includes Successful Templates, E-mails, etc.)

Kickstarter School

IndieGogo Crowdfunding Tips for Campaigners

Patrik

[Cathal Garvey]

I'm getting that impression from the feedback, yes. It would appear that
I suck at selling stuff; I wish I could wear that as some sort of
scientific badge of purity, but the reality is without that skill I'm
kind of hosed in my current "career".

I think I'll need to make an urgent pivot wrt the front-page pitch. I
welcome suggestions from people who don't suck.
Quick question on that score; is the TEDx talk any use? I never really
know if what I'm saying is welcomed based on raw enthusiasm or because
the message was delivered successfully. :P

My mantra for today: don't qualify, don't cite, don't offer proof. I'll
just have a "further technical information" link at the foot of the
page, I think.

This email failed to send prior to me writing a summary of the outcomes
of the survey so far, so I may as well link:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/indiebb-your-first-gmo/x/4252296?c=activity

On 19/02/14 09:54, Patrik D'haeseleer wrote:
> To be honest, I don't think the problem is with any of the issues in your
> survey - I think your IndieGogo campaign just isn't flashy enough. Too much
> hard science, not enough cheap-and-easy cool factor.
>

> The Frank N. Foode<https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/biofortified/bring-frank-n-foodetm-to-life>kickstarter has almost reached its $10K goal, and that's just for a
> plushie! The Dino Pet<https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yonder/dino-pet-a-living-bioluminescent-night-light-pet>project raised $168K, and all they're doing is designing a plastic bottle.

> The Glowing Plant project made half a million, not based on the strength of
> the science behind the project (although that definitely helped), but
> because they got people excited.
>
> Obviously, the issue is not with the scientific content of your project, or
> its open source nature or whatever - it's in the whole marketing angle that
> you need for a successful crowdfunding project. Yes, I know, it rankles
> having to sell yourself that way - the project should speak for itself,
> blah, blah, blah. Welcome to crowdfunding reality...
>
> I love your project, and I'll keep trying to drum up more support for it.
> But if worse comes to worst, you can always regroup and rerun the campaign
> again some other time. That's actually a fairly common strategy on
> IndieGogo.
>
> Meanwhile, let me leave you with some resources on how to milk the most out
> of a crowdfunding campaign:
>
> Slava Rubin of Indiegogo, offers advice for running a successful online

> crowdfunding campaign. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vNhNRaRPC8>
>
> How We Crowd-funded $484k to Make Glowing Plants<http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000001995/ch11.html>

>
> Hacking Kickstarter: How to Raise $100,000 in 10 Days (Includes Successful

> Templates, E-mails, etc.)<http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2012/12/18/hacking-kickstarter-how-to-raise-100000-in-10-days-includes-successful-templates-e-mails-etc/>
>
> Kickstarter School <https://www.kickstarter.com/help/school>
>
>
> IndieGogo Crowdfunding Tips for Campaigners<http://www.indiegogo.com/crowdfunding-tips>
>
>
> Patrik

>

--
Please help support my crowdfunding campaign, IndieBB: Currently at

25.4% of funding goal, with 23 days left:

[OpenBioLab Graz - Austria]

I know I'm an adult man and I shouldn't cry, but when I saw with what piece of dinosaur crap you can earn 168.517€ with, I was really close to.

Greets,
Alex Murer

--

(Offical, english) https://www.facebook.com/OpenBioLabGraz

(Wiki, german) olga.realraum.at

[Koeng]

I think the Tedx was good. Interesting talk, I think it probably helped for people to see the creator in a thing they know (Ted talks)

Gotta sadly agree, crowdfunding works because it gets people excited. Heck, I think I remember a guy that raised over 6k to write random funny quotes in the sky. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/309790545/kurt-braunohlers-cloud-project

The project was pretty pointed at DIYbio community. Hence the ton of early funding from the people in this community. Perhaps instead "Your first GMO" like "DNA engineering for everyone" because some people take GMO as bad.

-Koeng

[Cathal Garvey]

Sadly the name can't be changed, but the main text of the body can be.

I chose "GMO" deliberately, to be provocative! As they say, any
publicity is good publicity, and it also helps to challenge the
narrative. A lot of people *only* see liars like Seralini "talking about
GMOs" because scientists don't use the word, so if they look around for
information on "GMOs" they only see lies. That's changing, but I figured
I'd use the word to reach out to people who don't yet use words like
"Synbio", "DNA Engineering" or even "Biotechnology".

Yea, probably a mistake.

Anyway, I'm looking to overhaul the front page before pulling a few
ace-cards v/v getting visitors to the page; hopefully then when people
*do* visit more of them will hang around.

I was troubled by the mix of people who wanted, effectively, to know
*less* (beginners who wanted only the salient details; what's this, why
do I want it, what does it do) and those who were accusing me of selling
nothing but GFP, indicating that they needed *more* technical detail on
what's different about this kit (a lot).

But as I related on the analysis, I figure the latter group wouldn't
contribute anyway, so I'm not going to bother. I'll have a link to a
blogpost on "technical details" for advanced readers, and the rest of
the IndieBB pitch will get rewritten for total n00bs; let's see how that
works!

[Mike Horwath]

Hi Cathal,
I responded to your survey earlier.  I'm probably one of the people you can lump into "didn't contribute due to wanting more information".
For the sake of friendly discussion,

--I'm a grad student, and get to do the bio I'm really interested in at "work."  So I would only use IndieBB myself if it offers something I can't get on Addgene etc.
--However, I'm very supportive of DIYbio and educational tools being available to public.  I'd be willing to fund just for that reason.
--What worries me is the unproven non-antibiotic selection. If it was easy, we'd already be seeing more of it...
--I've witnessed someone i respect getting their kickstarter funded, spending the $, and ultimately not being able to deliver...it ain't pretty
--Don't get me wrong, you seem to have a lot of plasmid/gene hacking knowledge (definitely more than me!)
--Link to the blog post with details sounds great!
--Some endorsements from respected biologists (DIY or academic) would be nice...this is one thing that made me feel good about Glowing Plant

Mike

[Cathal Garvey]

Hi Mike!
Thanks for the feedback; reading through your email I think I recall
some of those queries from the survey, too.
Given that feedback (from you and others) I am currently writing a
Technical FAQ, which will allow me to offload the "hard stuff" from the
crowdfunding page while not doing you and others a disservice. I do want
this to be as open and informed as possible, without scaring newcomers
with excess data.

Anyway, while I write the FAQ, here are some quick answers to your
questions; I'm glad you asked!

> --I'm a grad student, and get to do the bio I'm really interested in
> at "work." So I would only use IndieBB myself if it offers something
> I can't get on Addgene etc.

Well, if I'm honest you may be able to find the Colicin V cluster on
Addgene, already; it's been thoroughly studied. And if you put work into
it, you could assemble that yourself with a fluorescent protein and a
stable origin of replication, add a multiple-cloning site, and you'd
have something that looks like IndieBB.

Two advantages to IndieBB: I'll be testing, modularising and optimising
(if appropriate) the Colicin cluster for you, so you don't have to do
all that hard work, and it'll be available to others; addgene is only
available to the Ivory Tower.

> --However, I'm very supportive of DIYbio and educational tools being
> available to public. I'd be willing to fund just for that reason.

Thanks! "Educational Kit" is the primary goal here, with "free/libre
biotech platform" as the close second. I think the more people who
handle biotechnology and feel a sense of ownership and self-control over
it, the less biophobia we'll see in the public sphere.

> --What worries me is the unproven non-antibiotic selection. If it was
> easy, we'd already be seeing more of it...

I don't think so, really. My experience of academia was that the
academic environment (not personality) forces people to accept tools
that work "well enough" because they are not funded to improve
fundamental methods. "Publish or Perish" means that you have to always
be working on speculative, publishable stuff, and that means you have
little time to be experimenting with better methods.

I recall suggesting an alternative transformation procedure to my
labmates (the procedure that'll be in IndieBB; the "TSS" method) once.
It was striking; one group made their own CaCl samples, the other bought
in Top10 cells at €20/sample. Neither were interested in TSS, because A)
being mid-experiment, they had to stick to consistent methods and B)
they had no time to "waste" on even time-saving experimental methods.

I know that's not universal, of course, but when antibiotics are
provided cheaply to university labs, it's not a big burden to just use
them and get on with research. It'd be nice not to have to use
antibiotics, but it's not worth three to six months of work, which is
what I'm devoting to IndieBB!

Especially since, as you note and I never denied, biotech is uncertain;
this mightn't work, even though I'm fairly sure it will.

> --I've witnessed someone i respect getting their kickstarter funded,
> spending the $, and ultimately not being able to deliver...it ain't

> pretty. Don't get me wrong, you seem to have a lot of plasmid/gene

> hacking knowledge (definitely more than me!)

I think this is implied in all crowdfunding projects though, and it's
not exclusive to those with a technical tendency to not-work (as biotech
has). I've backed books that never got written, for example.

I've budgeted accordingly, and it's part of the high price tag. It's an
all-or-nothing campaign and I've budgeted for three prototypes; why?
Because in my experience, you need at least two to test if something
really works. The third is for the finished product.

If it fails, then funders will have my sincere apology, but that's
science/engineering for you, and I'll never promise that this will work
until it does.

You say I have more plasmid-hacking knowledge; perhaps. I've made a
plasmid before that didn't work (fully). But, it did work partially, and
if I had 16,000 to make another two prototypes, I think I could have
made it work fully. That was far more speculative; in my *opinion* (no
guarantees), IndieBB is a much more down-to-earth bet than my prior work.

> --Link to the blog post with details sounds great!
> --Some endorsements from respected biologists (DIY or academic) would
> be nice...this is one thing that made me feel good about Glowing Plant

It's my curse that I work alone; not by choice, but by simple isolation.
So, while I know a great many people in this field, none of them are in
a position to join the project full-time.

I can offer citations for Colicin V, of course; in its natural context,
it is a self-selection system. However, in the high-growth-rate
environment of E.coli at 30C*, perhaps it'll need improvement; I'd err
towards putting Cvi and CvaC (immunity and toxin proteins, respective)
under a stronger promoter and keeping the transporters CvaA/B the same.
These sort of improvements have no precedent, because nobody's looked at
using Colicin V as an engineering tool in this manner, so I can't offer
citations or testimony towards them.

Hope that answers a few questions. I'm still writing the FAQ: If anyone
else wants to have a *technical* question answered, post it here and
I'll include it!

As to "regular" FAQ, of course I welcome that too so I can better
structure the main pitch.

Best,
Cathal

*Yep, 30C: Being forced to use wild-type GFP imposes this.

[SC]

Some friendly suggestions:

If your main goal is to make money by selling the kit, forget crowdsourcing and go straight for the payout.

1. Make your kit look presentable, with professional labels and printed boxes. And, really, you *do* have to hold yourself to a higher standard than your customers. I wouldn't buy a car from a manufacturer who had the same level of car building as I do, which is none. Same with pretty much everything else I buy.

2. Advertise to the home school crowd, or if you can scale up, directly to high school science departments. See if larger distributers can carry your product, like Carolina Biological.

3. On general terms, you can't compare projects on indieBB with kickstarter, for the same reason my neice's jewelry web site can't compare with Amazon even though she sells the same stuff for cheaper. IndieBB just doesn't get the same amount of traffic, and people who might be interested in projects there never see them. I get that kickstarter isn't too keen on GMOs, but that doesn't change the fact.

Best of luck to you, and please let us know how it goes.

Stacy

 

[Nathan McCorkle]

On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 8:30 AM, Mike Horwath <mike...@gmail.com> wrote:
> --What worries me is the unproven non-antibiotic selection. If it was easy,
> we'd already be seeing more of it...

I thought of this idea (self-selection, not specifically with colicin)
probably my first or second year of University, and the professors
didn't have any ideas on prior art and said it sounded unlike anything
they'd seen in the works.

Specifically my idea and question to them was, if we know the pathways
for say Kanamycin synthesis and know the Kanamycin resistance gene,
why not include them both on the same plasmid. I think the only answer
my Prof gave, if any, was that the operon for synthesis would be too
big... though that answer may have come from my own research or even
this very mailing list.

Now of course there are specifics of getting the drug outta the cell,
what's the mechanism of resistance (efflux pump, breakdown, some
endogenous enzyme requiring modification to not be affected, etc), but
I guess doing all that research has set up my mind to just love
Cathal's idea. He's got the evidence on mechanisms which seem like
they'd do the trick effectively, he's found/chosen genes/elements that
are small enough to fit on a 'normal sized' plasmid, he's got the
know-how to check for stupid hang-ups like frameshift errors, etc...
and on top of it all he's open-sourcing it, so during development
presumably he'd be asking for some community assessment/auditing
before dropping hundreds/thousands on synthesis (cause, you know,
unintentional frameshift errors SUCK).

[Nathan McCorkle]

On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 9:18 AM, SC <stac...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Some friendly suggestions:
> If your main goal is to make money by selling the kit, forget crowdsourcing
> and go straight for the payout.

But he's not got a product yet, the crowdfunding is for development.
Carolina's not gonna pre-pay for something that might not come to
existence.

> 1. Make your kit look presentable, with professional labels and printed
> boxes. And, really, you *do* have to hold yourself to a higher standard than
> your customers. I wouldn't buy a car from a manufacturer who had the same
> level of car building as I do, which is none. Same with pretty much
> everything else I buy.

Are you saying you're as experienced as Cathal, or rather that he's as
inexperienced as you? Maybe you could evaluate and be one of the
professional-endorsements Mike was looking for?

> 2. Advertise to the home school crowd, or if you can scale up, directly to
> high school science departments. See if larger distributers can carry your
> product, like Carolina Biological.
> 3. On general terms, you can't compare projects on indieBB with kickstarter,

Not sure if this has changed, but previously kickstarter was U.S.A. only.

[SC]

My comment about presenting a polished product resulted from this comment on his web site:

 

2) Those who felt that the project looked amateurish. That's actually deliberate, really; I could have printed labels for the test tubes (a surprisingly common complaint), but my philosophy has always been to act as I expect my customers to; use cheap equipment and work around the limitations that brings with better methods, and not to hold myself to a higher standard than I expect of customers. Apparently this doesn't appeal to a lot of people, however; that's good to know, and will inform any future projects I may engage in in the future.

 

I think people who are new to this sort of thing would rather buy a product from someone who knew more than they did.  Obviously the packaging doesn't necessarily prove anything either way, but it makes an impression. 

 

I do understand that the crowdsourcing was intended to help with product development, but people (at least sometimes) buy into these things in order to get something in return.  To that end, a nice looking photo would attract more people.

 

Regarding kickstarter vs. others, I wasn't suggesting he use kickstarter.  They don't want GMOs, or presumably anything in the GMO category (as well as being US only).   He was asking for reasons why his project wasn't doing as well, and there were comparisons made to projects on other, more widely viewed sites.  Advertising is important, and something many of us science folk haven't had experience with.

[Mega [Andreas Stuermer]]

Kickstarter only allows us and uk bank accounts (of someone of them reads, you should have changed that years ago :P ).

Depending on your bank they may be able to open a foreign account

[John Griessen]

On 02/19/2014 04:28 AM, Cathal Garvey wrote:
> the reality is without that skill I'm
> kind of hosed in my current "career".

Nahh... We'll help you rework that sales angle some.

>
> I think I'll need to make an urgent pivot wrt the front-page pitch. I
> welcome suggestions from people who don't suck.
> Quick question on that score; is the TEDx talk any use? I never really
> know if what I'm saying is welcomed based on raw enthusiasm or because
> the message was delivered successfully. :P

I don't remember a TEDx talk mentioned by you... Did you present one?

[John Griessen]

On 02/19/2014 09:31 AM, Cathal Garvey wrote:
> I'll have a link to a
> blogpost on "technical details" for advanced readers, and the rest of
> the IndieBB pitch will get rewritten for total n00bs; let's see how that
> works!

Sure, and why not! That may be just the thing for more young students
to buy some.


On 02/19/2014 11:06 AM, Cathal Garvey wrote:> I am currently writing a

> Technical FAQ, which will allow me to offload the "hard stuff" from the
> crowdfunding page while not doing you and others a disservice.

Right.

On 02/19/2014 11:15 AM, SC wrote:> 2. Advertise to the home school crowd, or if you can scale up, directly to high school science
departments. See if larger
> distributors can carry your product, like Carolina Biological.

I like the home schooling idea. How do those parents find what they need?
What company is like the digikey of home schooling? Which brings us to "distributors" -- they'll
get you an advantage in low prices without shipping individual packets to the large
market for such, the USA.

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

I think you may want to pull down the current IndieGogo campaign, and restart it under a different name. You'll likely need a couple weeks to properly prepare a better marketing presentation anyway. If you do go this route, make sure you capture your current list of funders, so you can jump start the new campaign with a bang.

A couple things you may want to consider:

- If you hit 25% of your funding in the first week, you are 5x more likely to get funding. So get all your friends and family involved *before* you even launch the campaign. Show them a mockup of your campaign page and ask them for feedback. How could you improve your pitch in a way that would make them consider donating? Maybe line up a few verbal commitments to support the campaign when it goes live. If you make a lot of progress in that first week, you may be able to hit the front page on IndieGogo and gain a lot more visibility. You've essentially already done most of this with your current campaign - just write it off as a dress rehearsal.

- If you have 4 or more people on your team, you'll raise 70% more funding than if you have one person. That team doesn't necessarily have to be the people doing the *research* - it's the team that helps you run the crowdfunding campaign. They can help you do all the necessary marketing legwork before the campaign goes live, use their own social networks to spread the word, talk to press and bloggers, answer questions, figure out the best way to send out rewards, etc. Maybe some of the people here on the DIYbio list would love to be associated with this project, just to see how a crowdfunding campaign works on the inside? Maybe add some scientific advisors - I'm listed as a scientific advisor on the Glowing Plant campaign, but I never expect to see a dime of that money.

- Talk to key bloggers and other journalists to line up a couple feature stories when your project goes live! If you hit one of the big blogs, others will likely pick it up as well, and that can easily multiply your visibility by orders of magnitude. Tim Ferris' Hacking Kickstarter article presents a very detailed strategy for how to target those kinds of people.

- Read Antony Evan's article on the Glowing Plant kickstarter in BioCoder, which covers a lot of these issues.

Patrik

[Mega [Andreas Stuermer]]

If you do that, I suggest kickstarter. I know you don't like them due to their science ban, neither do I. But.... Much more people there. And you can send your DNA because it is not GMO (yet)

[Cathal Garvey]

...it's not just that I don't like them, it's that they've banned
science. I literally could not do this on Kickstarter even if I wanted to.
Also, I'm Irish, so without opening foreign accounts, I can't get
Kickstarter to work for me.

On 20/02/14 08:23, Mega [Andreas Stuermer] wrote:
> If you do that, I suggest kickstarter. I know you don't like them due to their science ban, neither do I. But.... Much more people there. And you can send your DNA because it is not GMO (yet)
>

--
Please help support my crowdfunding campaign, IndieBB: Currently at

25.9% of funding goal, with 22 days left:

[Cathal Garvey]

Good advice, though I'm not sure I can follow it for financial reasons;
my wife is now into the unpaid stretch of maternity leave, and we have
plenty of bills and loans to pay. This means I'll have to seek
alternative employment soon (a rare commodity in Ireland, I hope you'll
appreciate), and will not have time to start another crowdfunding campaign.

Of course, that wouldn't be the end of DIYbio for me, just the end of
full-time DIYbio. I've had ~2 years of full-time work, and I've had a
good run. My gene synthesis experiments have gotten steadily better (as
I wrote and improved PySplicer) and my protocol collection has expanded
and steadly gotten less resource-intensive.

But the goal of creating a viable open source product has been elusive;
particularly after getting dicked around by Genscript for several months
on the supposedly "last ditch" attempt at cheap-resin protein
purification, which wasted time and money. IndieBB ought to have
launched before Christmas but for that and other delays.

Anyways, yes; you're right about hacking crowdfunding, vis-a-vis getting
significant input from friends and family first. I think I have a mental
block there, where (partially because I'm already the recipient of such
familial generosity) I don't feel comfortable asking people to commit
money to something unless they choose to do so themselves. So I've been
happy to let friends know about IndieBB, but I haven't asked them to
contribute. Yet, many friends and family still did; much love, there.

For project collaborators, I guess I didn't even consider that I could
add people as "social media campaigners"; I thought it'd be dishonest to
add someone who wasn't in a position to directly assist with the "work".
Silly really, as fundraising *is* work. If someone feels like getting
collaborator access to the campaign at this late stage and helping me to
evangelise, I'd be totally happy to add them and shower them with gratitude!

As far as bloggists and Journos.. Well, I'll hopefully be getting
something on the SynbioBeta blog soon, courtesy of those excellent and
very patient people. Perhaps that'll reach the right audience!
Disappointingly I have not had much success with "casual tech" blogs who
often cover other bio-shenanigans. Perhaps for the same reason the
frontpage is driving away newcomers.

Food for thought! And a lot of lessons learned. I'm still going to press
ahead and hope that IndieBB works out. Failing that, I'm tempted to
pivot entirely into software for a while, it's less expensive to develop
and it more often succeeds.

On 20/02/14 01:44, Patrik D'haeseleer wrote:
> I think you may want to pull down the current IndieGogo campaign, and
> restart it under a different name. You'll likely need a couple weeks to
> properly prepare a better marketing presentation anyway. If you do go
this
> route, make sure you capture your current list of funders, so you can
jump
> start the new campaign with a bang.
>
> A couple things you may want to consider:
>
> - If you hit 25% of your funding in the first week, you are 5x more
likely
> to get

funding<http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=-vNhNRaRPC8#t=122>.

> So get all your friends and family involved *before* you even launch the
> campaign. Show them a mockup of your campaign page and ask them for
> feedback. How could you improve your pitch in a way that would make them
> consider donating? Maybe line up a few verbal commitments to support the
> campaign when it goes live. If you make a lot of progress in that first
> week, you may be able to hit the front page on IndieGogo and gain a lot
> more visibility. You've essentially already done most of this with your
> current campaign - just write it off as a dress rehearsal.
>
> - If you have 4 or more people on your team, you'll raise 70% more
funding
> than if you have one

person<http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=-vNhNRaRPC8#t=136>.

> That team doesn't necessarily have to be the people doing the
*research* -
> it's the team that helps you run the crowdfunding campaign. They can help
> you do all the necessary marketing legwork before the campaign goes live,
> use their own social networks to spread the word, talk to press and
> bloggers, answer questions, figure out the best way to send out rewards,
> etc. Maybe some of the people here on the DIYbio list would love to be
> associated with this project, just to see how a crowdfunding campaign
works
> on the inside? Maybe add some scientific advisors - I'm listed as a
> scientific advisor on the Glowing Plant campaign, but I never expect
to see
> a dime of that money.
>
> - Talk to key bloggers and other journalists to line up a couple feature
> stories when your project goes live! If you hit one of the big blogs,
> others will likely pick it up as well, and that can easily multiply your
> visibility by orders of magnitude. Tim Ferris' Hacking Kickstarter

article<http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2012/12/18/hacking-kickstarter-how-to-raise-100000-in-10-days-includes-successful-templates-e-mails-etc/>presents

a very detailed strategy for how to target those kinds of people.
>
> - Read Antony Evan's article on the Glowing Plant kickstarter in

BioCoder<http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000001995/ch11.html>,

25.9% of funding goal, with 22 days left:

[Dirk Broenink]

I would like to know lots of examples of things that could be created using this kit, that is the kind of thing that I want to know before I buy something. 

Pat of my reaction was: this sounds cool, but once I have it, what can I do with it? 

I can get a feel for what else is possible when given examples, the more examples the better.

[Cathal Garvey]

Hi Dirk!
Good advice, thanks. That question (what can I do after making things
fluorescent?) is something I attempted, perhaps too windily, to answer
with "What Will Your IndieBB Be?" (http://www.indiebiotech.com/?p=230),
but I agree that some examples need to be on the front page.

I'm thinking of putting up a list of curated links to inspiring iGEM
projects, but it's a pity there aren't more well-known DIYbio-level
plasmid projects? Suggestions for "further projects you could take
inspiration from" welcome.

25.9% of funding goal, with 22 days left:

[Cathal Garvey]

Hi friends,
I'm not finished making changes, but here's where I'm at with the
campaign page so far. Feedback very welcome; is this close to the level
of non-technical, beginner-friendly blurb I need? :)
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/indiebb-your-first-gmo/x/4252296

NB: I can't change the name, so I'm afraid that's there to stay!

[Bryan Bishop]

On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 8:06 AM, Cathal Garvey <cathal...@cathalgarvey.me> wrote:

campaign page so far. Feedback very welcome; is this close to the level
of non-technical, beginner-friendly blurb I need? :)
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/indiebb-your-first-gmo/x/4252296

Not even close. Don't wait 400 words until you reveal to the reader that your kit can make fluorescent bacteria. Make the offer up-front and the first thing that they read (not something about flash or proprietary whatevers). Move the video to the top. Your <h3>s are bad. Probably increase the font size; definitely less paragraphs, more hard-to-tell-if-baseless claims.

Hire 10 different people on fiverr.com to steal kickstarter.com projects' copy and ask them to replace parts of the copy to make it work for your campaign. Have each of the 10 people write out the text that they would expect to see on a kickstarter.com campaign.

Finally, if you want to kick up dirt, go email the annoying dorks at ETC Group.

- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
1 512 203 0507

[John Griessen]

On 02/20/2014 03:58 AM, Cathal Garvey wrote:
> I'm tempted to
> pivot entirely into software for a while, it's less expensive to develop
> and it more often succeeds.

That could be a good one for an indiegogo campaign!
Then the list of supporters/buyers of FOSS development
can be hit up again for new features, or new software apps.
And go and get a foreign/UK account to use kickstarter.com!

On 02/20/2014 04:57 AM, Dirk Broenink wrote:> I would like to know lots of examples of things that could be created using this kit

Yes, that is maybe obvious to an experienced scientist, yet needs spelling out for young students and
other crowdfunding backers...

I have a question for you, "What does BB in IndieBB stand for?" Bio-Brick?

BB has connotations here in the US of being ammunition for air rifles.

Also, for promoting to groups like home schoolers, even the word fragment "Indie" may be off-putting.
Customers in education may just want an authority figure and certifications and photos
of serious looking guys and gals in white lab coats with goggles on. Plus those buyers
definitely need the long list of: "What does that do for me?" spelled out.

[Cathal Garvey]

> Not even close. Don't wait 400 words until you reveal to the reader
> that your kit can make fluorescent bacteria. Make the offer up-front
> and the first thing that they read (not something about flash or
> proprietary whatevers).

Great advice, thanks.

> Move the video to the top. Your <h3>s are bad. Probably
> increase the font size; definitely less paragraphs, more
> hard-to-tell-if-baseless claims.

Moving the video right below a baseless-claim-filled first 3 paragraphs.
Increase normal font size? And are you suggesting smaller headers, h4/h5?

> Finally, if you want to kick up dirt, go email the annoying dorks at
> ETC Group.

I had strongly considered taking an "any publicity is good publicity"
approach. Plus, there's no better way to get loads of pro-GMO people to
see your work than to get some asshats like GMWatch to tweet about it.
But, given their startling success in getting Kickstarter

[Will Sutton]

 - You're in Tech Review, and NYT: people need to see that as a big logos near the top.

 - emphasize the Irish aspect (again thru visuals, not text)

 - Play up the "outsider taking on Big-Bio". You're the champion for "the people"  (here's one campaign that does it amusingly well)

 - GMO/Genetically Modified Organism - too cold, analytic language. I'm just riffing but "GMO, get in the know, make it glow...etc". speak like a guy at a carnival; it's what crowdfunding sites are. People with disposable income come to spend it in exchange for an exotic experience. If they wanted acronyms they'd go to the library.

- Target audiences, I don't know if you've reached out to these groups:

    School teachers - so cool! so easy! so safe! 

    Engineers/Programmers - So you think you can program life? All in one Hello World kit...see if you have the mind for SynBio 2.0. Emphasize the challenge.

-Will

On Tuesday, February 18, 2014 7:59:23 AM UTC-5, Cathal Garvey wrote:

Hi all,
I'm over halfway through the IndieBB campaign, and slightly below 25%
funded. Things aren't, if I'm honest, looking rosy. Consequently I'd
like to better understand what factors are most important to people in
choosing whether or not to support the project.

I could just put a query out on the list, but then people would feel shy
about responding publicly. So, I've dived into surveymonkey and made a
survey; I promise not to dig into the identities of respondants, I'm not
interested in *who* you are, just *what you think of IndieBB*.

So, if you could please spare a minute for my single-page survey and
help me better understand the diybio community's DNA-related desires:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PRFB6S5

Thank you all!
Cathal

--
Please help support my crowdfunding campaign, IndieBB: Currently at

24.2% of funding goal, with 24 days left:

[Cathal Garvey]

Really good advice! I'm sure Tech Review etc. won't mind me taking
advantage of their logos on this one, so I'll get that done asap.

As far as "GMO..make it glow", mind if I steal that one directly? :D
Did you know the "umbrella company" I created to handle these projects
is called Glowbiotics Ltd? How fortunate!

On 20/02/14 22:21, Will Sutton wrote:
>
> - You're in Tech Review, and NYT: people need to see that as a big logos
> near the top.
>
> - emphasize the Irish aspect (again thru visuals, not text)
>
> - Play up the "outsider taking on Big-Bio". You're the champion for "the

> people" (here's one campaign that does it amusingly well<https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/918069667/nematode-pamphlet?ref=tag>
> )

25.9% of funding goal, with 21 days left:

[Nathan McCorkle]

On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 2:24 PM, Cathal Garvey
<cathal...@cathalgarvey.me> wrote:
> On 20/02/14 22:21, Will Sutton wrote:
>> - emphasize the Irish aspect (again thru visuals, not text)

Heh, the old 4-leaf clover! (glowing maybe?)

[Sebastian Cocioba]

If you need a fluorescent clover, hit me up! :P

Sebastian S. Cocioba
CEO & Founder
New York Botanics, LLC
Plant Biotech R&D From: Nathan McCorkle
Sent: 2/20/2014 5:32 PM
To: diybio
Cc: diyb...@diybio.eu; diybio-...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [DIYbio] Re: IndieBB Campaign Survey; Help Appreciated

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[Simon Quellen Field]

An umbrella corporation doing recombinant genetics. What could possibly go wrong?

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On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 2:24 PM, Cathal Garvey <cathal...@cathalgarvey.me> wrote:

[Dakota Hamill]

Many great video games came from that

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[Patrik D'haeseleer]

Excellent advice from Bryan and Will.

Also make sure to point out very early on that you're designing a novel plasmid, that will be easier to use, safer, open source, and won't generate antibiotic resistant bacteria! Yes, kids are probably your primary market, but there's plenty of sophisticated kids out there who will say "Meh, I've already done this kit".

If you have time, you may also want to rework your video a bit - skip the long intro, and hit the main points in the first 10-20 seconds of the video.

Patrik

[Winand Slingenbergh]

I would suggest featuring the "all or nothing" aspect of your campaign way at the top, this will get the might as well/nothing to lose crowd to keep reading.

--

Regards,

Winand Slingenbergh

[Kermit Henson]

Hi, 

I really support this project, I think it can be very useful for different uses. But... 

- Strongly agree with the marketing issue. A video showing a workshop with kids, and what they would do... you know, marketing ;) it's important to show people what can they do

- Show the how is going to be the protocol. Some will have to build an incubator, but what about those who don't?  

- Also, if crowdfunded campaigns are based on virality, the campaign's platform should be in line with the product. Indiegogo has less biotech projects than Kiskstarter.

- Don't believe that using words such GMO is important at all, maybe the problem is the security concerned to that word. Plus, if it "removes the need to include or require antibiotics in the kit", you should show how and why that's true.

- If the kit wants to be used for education, speaking with some teachers/schools before launch campaign could give you a push. Also valid for other targets

- Call for people that helps you to push local targets

Hope this project keeps moving on

Kermit

[Cathal Garvey]

I got a tweet last week from an acquaintance that went something like:
"Hey, you've inspired a character in a book I'm writing. He makes a
virus that kills everything on the planet."

..vote of confidence, that.

On 21/02/14 00:25, Simon Quellen Field wrote:
> An umbrella corporation
> <http://residentevil.wikia.com/Umbrella_Corporation>doing recombinant

26.2% of funding goal, with 20 days left:

[Dirk Broenink]

Thanks for your answer Cathal.ts 

I'm still a beginner, I have read some biology undergraduate chapters, watched tutorials on youtube and I have been lurking this forum to see if I could understand what you guys are talking about. Understand the terms, etc.

So here's an idea for a project: I like the Spathiphyllum's (and some other plant species, but I have this plant in my living room) ability to filter the air for contaminants. 

I want to see if it is possible to harvest this ability and be able to put it in other plants, as well as bacteria. 

Spathiphyllum has not been sequenced fully yet, so that would be the first step. But assuming that at some point I have sequenced this successfully, can I use your kit to possibly transfer this ability to other organisms? If so, would the regular kit suffice or would I need a deluxe kit? 

Gr, Dirk

[Mega [Andreas Stuermer]]

Hi Dirk,
In theory yes. The kit allows you to take the "air cleaning genes" and put it into the plasmid (but you need to buy the restriction enzymes and ligase yourself). if you incubate plant protoplasts with PEG and DNA it will take up the DNA.

You could do that with any other plasmid too. But this gives you the advantage of avoiding antibiotic resistances.

On the other hand, the immediate target of the kit is to learn the basics of DNA work in bacteria.

[Dirk Broenink]

Cool, thanks. I guess I would need to know which part of Spathiphyllum's DNA codes for 'air cleaning' and which doesn't. Is there a maxium size of base pairs that can be put into plasmids?

Another question, where do I buy restriction enzymes and ligase, and how much would that cost? Can I ship that to The Netherlands without problems?

[Cathal Garvey]

I'd be a bit more cagey on the original question. Yes, if you knew what
genes you wanted, you could use IndieBB as an intermediate vector to
contain the DNA while you wrangle it into the right shape.

This is the normal way of engineering plants; first assemble and prepare
the DNA in bacteria, usually E.coli on a special Agrobacterium shuttle
plasmid, then transfer to Agrobacterium, then get Agrobacterium to
infect plant tissue with the plasmid, and then try to regenerate an
entire plant from modified tissue.

You *could* do this with IndieBB, but if plants are the goal perhaps
you'd be faster pestering Sebastian. That's because in addition to your
desired DNA, you'd need to add the DNA for plasmid housekeeping
functions in Agrobacteruim, and the special bits that Agrobacterium uses
to seize your plasmid and shove it through a molecular needle into the
plant tissue.

As far as "maximum size", yes; most plasmids have a defined carrying
capacity, beyond which they become unstable. I'll be aiming for larger
carrying capacity over copy number when choosing the origin for IndieBB,
because the trend with synbio is towards more complicated genetic
systems..but I won't be going for the real heavy-carrying ones, because
they're often also low-copy-number and therefore possibly harder to work
with using DIY methods.

I don't have time to dig deeply into the research (though there's a
pledge for that!), but I'd imagine that the gene system in Spathiphyllum
and other "air purifying" plants is opportunistic and not active,
perhaps not even specific to the pollutants it's associated with. That
is, the plant's stoma are constantly allowing air to diffuse in and
around the leaf tissue, and volotile organic compounds diffuse into the
cell cytoplasm; there, it's just converted by a cytochrome or other
enzyme into something the cell can use, or is just detoxified and dumped.

If this is the case, and if someone has found the appropriate protein,
then you could probably get a bacterium to express that cytochrome
(watch out for cofactors bacteria mightn't have much of) or enzyme, and
then grow them in liquid broth with air sparged in through as fine a
stone as possible. VOCs will dissolve in the broth as readily as they do
in plant tissue, and get converted, digested or fixed by the bacteria.

Downside; the output will smell of bacteria, so you might want to use
indole-negative E.coli and add the gene for wintergreen or "fresh rain"
to make your air purifier also produce perfume. Making pseudo-defined
broth medium that doesn't smell funny would be a little bit of work, but
not too much I imagine. :)

--
Please help support my crowdfunding campaign, IndieBB: Currently at

26.8% of funding goal, with 19 days left:

[Mega [Andreas Stuermer]]

You actually don't need agrobacterium. If you can make protoplasts, just incubate them with naked DNA and PEG. It will randomly integrate.
Or use a gene gun and bombard a leave.

[Kevin Chen]

Hi Cathal!

I am a fan of the campaign and looking forwards to success! (if not this time, then the next) There's some great feedback in this thread. I agree with most of the stuff about making a generally flashier front page. Anyone that really wants the technical details can find it themselves. Here are a few of my own comments:

I've heard similar things to this post by Patrik
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/diybio/sjLNewZR7IY/lOnNjr7zFBcJ
I heard that you can start with a certain level of funding if you already have money from other sources, and then if you gain a following for the project before starting the campaign, you can get that initial burst of funding, which gives you a chance of getting featured by indiegogo. You want to go for that "Wow! 80% funded in just 48 hours!" kind of thing, I guess. So giving it a 2nd attempt might not be such a bad idea.

"For project collaborators, I guess I didn't even consider that I could
add people as "social media campaigners"; I thought it'd be dishonest to
add someone who wasn't in a position to directly assist with the "work".
Silly really, as fundraising *is* work. If someone feels like getting
collaborator access to the campaign at this late stage and helping me to
evangelise, I'd be totally happy to add them and shower them with gratitude! "

A whole shower of gratitude!? I can do my best, though I'm not really sure of anything specific I can help with, other than tweeting/sharing. Ideas?

If you're looking for some comparison on what not to do, here are a couple examples of bio campaigns that failed, though I can't say much about specific reasons for the failures:
Yovivo
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/yovivo-yogurt-naturally-inspired-synthetic-biology-meets-global-health
Biotech and Beyond
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/bio-tech-beyond

From Dirk below: "Pat of my reaction was: this sounds cool, but once I have it, what can I do with it?"
I had that same sort of vibe, but since my background is in biochem, I can see potential in even having a PCR product of the Colicin/Anti-colicin genes. Stock vectors are awesome to have around.

"You say I have more plasmid-hacking knowledge; perhaps. I've made a
plasmid before that didn't work (fully). But, it did work partially, and
if I had 16,000 to make another two prototypes, I think I could have
made it work fully. That was far more speculative; in my *opinion* (no
guarantees), IndieBB is a much more down-to-earth bet than my prior work. "

Awesome, I'm interested in how you're designing/designed these.

Super cool stuff! Good luck and I'm looking forward to hearing more!

Kevin

On Tuesday, February 18, 2014 7:59:23 AM UTC-5, Cathal Garvey wrote:

Hi all,
I'm over halfway through the IndieBB campaign, and slightly below 25%
funded. Things aren't, if I'm honest, looking rosy. Consequently I'd
like to better understand what factors are most important to people in
choosing whether or not to support the project.

I could just put a query out on the list, but then people would feel shy
about responding publicly. So, I've dived into surveymonkey and made a
survey; I promise not to dig into the identities of respondants, I'm not
interested in *who* you are, just *what you think of IndieBB*.

So, if you could please spare a minute for my single-page survey and
help me better understand the diybio community's DNA-related desires:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PRFB6S5

Thank you all!
Cathal

--
Please help support my crowdfunding campaign, IndieBB: Currently at

24.2% of funding goal, with 24 days left:

[Nathan McCorkle]

Actually Cathal, why aren't you doing a campaign for the cheap resin protein extraction? You'd have a lot more appeal to lab folks who need a new workhorse.

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[Patrik D'haeseleer]

On Saturday, February 22, 2014 12:28:30 PM UTC-8, Cathal Garvey wrote:

I'd imagine that the gene system in Spathiphyllum
and other "air purifying" plants is opportunistic and not active,
perhaps not even specific to the pollutants it's associated with. That
is, the plant's stoma are constantly allowing air to diffuse in and
around the leaf tissue, and volotile organic compounds diffuse into the
cell cytoplasm; there, it's just converted by a cytochrome or other
enzyme into something the cell can use, or is just detoxified and dumped.

I would also bet that this is a system that is present in most plants but works better at filtering pollutants in some plants than others, and that involves dozens of genes. Just figuring out which genes, and what would be a minimal set to be moved into other plants, may be a multi-year project.

Not something I would want to work on without doing a very thorough search of the literature first...

Patrik

[Cathal Garvey]

Hey Nathan,

On 22/02/14 22:41, Nathan McCorkle wrote:
> Actually Cathal, why aren't you doing a campaign for the cheap resin
> protein extraction? You'd have a lot more appeal to lab folks who
> need a new workhorse.

Because it didn't work, at least the 3 times I tried (burning most of
what remained of my funds in the process). I did feel that had strong
potential to attract professional buyers (benchtop scientists, small
producers, DIYers who wanted to ferment their own lab-enzymes, etc.), if
successful, but..

I may as well document my failures and make them unpatentable in case
they'd work under different circumstances. I've already planned a post
about the original plasmid effort, so I'll spare "full disclosure" on my
bacillus plasmid until then.

At least as far as the resin extraction experiment, here was the idea:
* Agar is cheap, abundant, easily purified almost everywhere. Most labs
have purified, desulfonated agar and agarose already.
* Plenty of agarases have been studied well, some have been divided into
cleavage and binding domains.
* Other carbohydrate binding domains from the same (very broad) family
are already in use for protein purification; Maltose-binding protein,
for example.

Digging around, I found that for some reason nobody had thought of using
Agar for protein purification.

Let me put that in perspective. There are patents out there for using
artificial calcium-binding peptides, hair-binding peptides, and
cellulose binding peptides. But nobody had talked much about using
agar-binding peptides or natural protein domains, and I couldn't see any
patents on the application of agarases to protein purification.

So, my task was to find and attempt to use an unpatented agarase as a
protein purification system, and I found one in the AgaD agar-binding
domain. Many agarases are patented, most of them down to 10% or 5% amino
sequence identity (which, if you're unaware of the significance, is an
absolute absurdity). AgaD was not patented, and was not apparently being
studied with commercial intent. I found a paper that successfully
divided the domain into carbohydrate-digesting and merely
carbohydrate-binding domains, and successfully got the "Carbohydrate
Binding Module" (CBM) to bind to agar at 4C in a totally simple buffer.

So, I fired up PySplicer, optimised a fusion of wild-type GFP to the CBM
(with a cleavable peptide in between) with an E.coli periplasmic
tat-export signal peptide (sec export doesn't usually work with GFP as
it can't re-fold in periplasm) and ordered from Genscript. Received, had
difficulty determining whether the fluorescence I was seeing was any
different from E.coli autofluorescence, and could not get any detectable
purified fluorescent periplasmic fraction. However, I would later learn
(d'oh) that while I was using a UV-A LED lamp, wild-type GFP doesn't
respond well to that, and you need a blacklight (as in a UV fluorescent
lamp).

Tried again, this time with GFP and the CBM in reversed order. Didn't
work on first try, tried again with a UVA blacklight *by accident* (I
only bought one so I could compare wild-type to transformants
side-by-side to distinguish autofluorescence), and found that actually
the optimised GFP was *totally clear* under a blacklight. Yay, PySplicer
works! Sadly, the CBM didn't appear to work. I could extract fluorescent
cytoplasmic and periplasmic fractions, which is consistent with
Tat-export of highly expressed proteins (it bottlenecks and you get most
of the protein in the cytoplasm; for "production" you've got to add
extra copies of the tat system), but neither would bind agar/ose under
any tested conditions.

Tried a third time, using a brighter GFP variant to enhance detection of
possible weak binding, and removing the TatA export signal so I could
focus only on the binding issue without worrying about other unknowns. I
could extract cytoplasmic fractions that were pleasingly fluorescent,
but did not bind agar/ose under any tested conditions.

Sounds real quick, but that took more than half a year, and yielded only
one positive result; that pysplicer worked great at optimising the GFP
domain, at least! Also, never order from genscript within 3 months of
the iGEM jamboree. I got dropped to the bottom of the pile despite
initially paying double for quick shipping, and ended up waiting 4
months for my DNA; 4 months of living expenses and no experiment to
complete! Kept being told "next week".

The feedback I get from CBM experts is that they're temperamental, and
sometimes cease to work when fused to other proteins. Maltose-binding
protein appears to be a nice exception, generally not caring what you
fuse it to. But in my case, the AgaD carbohydrate binding domain appears
to be a "lone wolf" CBM, and the experiment had to be written off.

After all that, I have very little funding to try any of my other
speculative ideas, so I've scaled back to something I'm surprised nobody
else has attempted yet; the "beginner's biotech" kit, with a custom
plasmid designed for DIYers. Perhaps I should have gone out with a bang
and tried one more wacky idea; still considering that if the crowdfunder
doesn't work, but all of my current "wacky" ideas are far too expensive
for the funds I have left, and will certainly take months to test.

Anyways, I'll upload a git repo soon containing a cleaned-up version of
my working directories for the three drafts (I used my awful DNA design
scripting language, the original fastac, for this; it's not pretty). If
anyone out there notices a glaring mess-up or omission that might
warrant a fourth attempt, I'd certainly consider it..

best,
Cathal

PS: "Obvious to one skilled in the art" here includes the use of *any*
agar, agarose, agaropectin or other carbohydrate binding domains or
whole proteins as a fusion partner to allow cheap affinity purification
of proteins. Also "obvious" but too expensive for me to attempt is
optimisation by rapid mutagenesis of the protein domains or the spacer
of aminos joining the fused domains, in order to obtain a CBM:GFP
pairing that does work. Also "obvious" is continued attempts to optimise
a buffer or other experimental conditions that would lead to a
functional fusion. Please don't steal my work from the public domain by
patenting it.

On 22/02/14 22:41, Nathan McCorkle wrote:
> Actually Cathal, why aren't you doing a campaign for the cheap resin
> protein extraction? You'd have a lot more appeal to lab folks who need a
> new workhorse.

--
Please help support my crowdfunding campaign, IndieBB: Currently at

26.8% of funding goal, with 19 days left:

[Steve]

Hey Cathal,
A style suggestion: I've resposted tweets and links to the campaign, the default thumbnail is of the eppies.  Considered maybe a (static) cartoon or diagram for the campaign, something with a "poster" campaign kind of vibe to it?
just my 2c
Steve

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