Is this mini initiative dead ?

[Dan Kolis]

I sadly note no material here, generally.

Sad to think DIY biotech just went nowhere, or what ?

hmmm,

Sad Dan in Toronto

[Dakota Hamill]

Hello Sad Dan.

Group definitely used to be more active, but many of us still lurk.  I think many people "grew up" and finished school, started their careers, had to get real jobs, life, responsibilities, all that jazz.  Not all hobbies pay the bills.  Some went on to start companies, very large push to move everything to closed source once you get funding. 

I've been reading 2 books recently called "Open-source lab" by Joshua Pearce and "Building open source hardware" by Alicia Gibb to understand more of the companies that have used that business model successfully.  

Science is awesome, but it doesn't always pay the bills, and that sucks. 

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[John Griessen]

On 1/17/24 09:22, Dakota Hamill wrote:
> very large push to move everything to closed source once you get funding.

+1

> I've been reading 2 books recently called "Open-source lab" by Joshua Pearce and "Building open source hardware" by Alicia Gibb to
> understand more of the companies that have used that business model successfully.

Thanks for those.

I lost some courage for OSHW after making a nice functioning electroporator circuit, (culture shock), when I got little testing
help or even suggestions for what would make it the best speed tool. It's a high voltage tool, so safety testing is needed and
expensive, and then there's plastic molding for even just bare usability -- brick boxes don't cut it when you need safety
interlock doors. Lacking a finished usable UI and enclosure with buttons and readouts stops most all from testing it seems. So
then you're in non-open trade secret mode to survive instead of go bankrupt.

So now I'm lo0king into "low pressure slow", but full auto plastic molding. That kind of thing, (with 3DP tooling), will enable
small product testing runs of 100s cheaply.

--
John Griessen
1 bankruptcy, never again...

[Nathan McCorkle]

I like to think, we're all busy in the lab!

My goals really haven't changed from the bulk of my past postings. It's a lot of work reaching these goals. Moreso when you're using the "DIY" approach. Working now in a corporate engineering day-job, it's more and more apparent that "do it together" gets things done faster and possibly with less stress, although the type of stress is also a different form.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/diybio/CAGdeWmTb4rhFy5hwQTHn-TRiK%2BnAZHJpATjaiGiUAGpXxdRCdA%40mail.gmail.com.

--

-Nathan

[John Griessen]

On 1/17/24 10:06, Nathan McCorkle wrote:
> Working now in a corporate engineering day-job, it's more and more apparent that "do it together" gets things done faster and
> possibly with less stress, although the type of stress is also a different form.

DITBIO! OK, and for most real life enthusiasts, it takes capital too...

So, the new DITBIO group proposed by Nathan needs bookkeeping, corporation law, entrepreneurship, and maybe even stock trading
classes to go along with it. In the US S-corps that pass through gains or losses to individual tax returns are the way to make a
far flung group work. Internationally it could be possible, but I don't know how feasible to have a far flung across boundaries
group that shares in profits and funding by debt, or direct contribution.

[Simon Quellen Field]

Indeed. :-)

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[boj Ko]

All right guys say the problem is that you want to build your own business model on the basis of the obtained data and for this you need start-up capital and no one gives you start-up capital and collateral is very difficult to use to get money because everyone wants to get it for free if it is some flat or house that you are trying to take a loan for in order to open your own business it becomes a real hell because everyone is trying to drive you into conditions where you will lose everything investors in this topic to find almost impossible to find.   And the attempts of several guys from this group to get money by launching their own cryptocurrency - also failed because to get listed even on a weak cryptocurrency exchange and to gather an audience there requires huge costs for copywriting, which will all be used to gather an interested audience from various resources such as Twitter and Reddit as well as Discord groups And this is oh how not easy people for free do not want to do anything naturally. 

here is a project that was closed due to lack of funding - a friend of mine from Pittsburgh with whom we often sat in your group.

 Biotechnologically Derived Respirator with Bacterial Cellulose Matrix:

1. Base Layer: Bacterial Cellulose Matrix
   - Composition: Heat-treated bacterial cellulose forming a dense, absorbent matrix.
   - Characteristics: Provides structural integrity, biodegradability, and a porous structure for subsequent layers.

 2. Active Filtration Layer: Modified Nanofibers
   - Composition: Biotechnologically modified polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) nanofibers integrated into the bacterial cellulose matrix.
   - Characteristics:Actively captures fine particles, pollutants, bacteria, and viruses, exceeding FFP3 standards.

3. Nano-pore Layer: Nanotechnology-Infused Polyurethane Matrix
   - Composition: Nanoporous layer infused with biotechnologically derived polyurethane.
   - Characteristics: Maintains optimal airflow while preventing the passage of particles, enhancing breathability.

4. Active Charcoal Layer: Biotechnologically Derived Active Charcoal
   - Composition: Activated charcoal derived from biotechnological processes.
   - Characteristics:Enhances adsorption of gases and vapors, providing comprehensive protection against airborne contaminants.

 5. Anti-Microbial Layer: Modified Silver Nanoparticles
   - Composition: Biotechnologically modified silver nanoparticles embedded in a polyethylene matrix.
   - Characteristics: Actively inhibits microbial growth, ensuring hygienic use throughout the respirator's lifespan.

6. Moisture-Wicking Layer: Treated Moisture-Wicking Fibers
   - Composition: Biotechnologically treated polyester fibers to wick away moisture.
   - Characteristics: Enhances comfort by preventing the buildup of humidity within the respirator during extended use.

7. Outer Protective Layer: Durable, Water-Resistant Biocompatible Material
   - Composition: Biocompatible polypropylene material with water-resistant properties.
   - Characteristics: Protects inner layers from external contamination, ensuring the longevity of the respirator.

Technical Justification:

- Biodegradability: The bacterial cellulose base layer and other biotechnologically derived components contribute to the respirator's eco-friendly nature.
 
- Filtration Efficiency: Modified nanofibers, nano-pore layer, and active charcoal provide filtration efficiency surpassing FFP3 standards.

- Antimicrobial Protection: Silver nanoparticles in the antimicrobial layer actively inhibit microbial growth, maintaining the respirator's hygienic properties.

Characteristics of Use:

- High Protection Level: Offers superior protection against fine particles, pollutants, bacteria, and viruses, exceeding FFP3 standards.

- Comfortable Extended Use: Moisture-wicking and breathable layers enhance user comfort during prolonged wear.

- Adaptive Filtration: Adapts to varying pollution levels, providing effective protection in diverse environments.

- Use Duration: Intended for up to 15 hours of continuous wear during active use.

Characteristics of Storage:

- Optimal Storage Conditions: Store in a cool, dry place away from direct sunlight to maintain the integrity of the biotechnologically derived materials.

- Shelf Life: Designed for a shelf life of 10 years, ensuring effectiveness during the intended usage period.
 

среда, 17 января 2024 г. в 19:18:01 UTC+2, Simon Quellen Field:

[Aaron Berger]

I think what's really at issue here is the DIYBIO ethos itself. The projects we embark on with little to no resources is when necessity leads to invention. But projects such as these are not often pitchable in the venture capital sense. This unfortunate fact, however, does not minimize the reality that these projects need funding to find some kind of scale. If indeed scale is possible. It is this gap between "hobby" project and scalable business that will always crop up, dismayingly so. The solution I envision is that when one seeks funding or support for a DIY project she should sell the DIYBIO ethos itself. This endeavor can lead to a more considered perspective on one's own work (and then someone might try to monetize your idea). For example, if one is selling an early personal computer, they may demonstrate that it can rationalize spreadsheets and send email. They are selling connectivity and rationality, not a computer. DIYBIO is a discipline in its own right. It will only become more relevant in the years to come. I think if this is advocated for, VCs may understand, and the gap between project and funding will collapse.

Hopeful Aaron in Princeton, NJ

[John Griessen]

On 1/22/24 04:39, Aaron Berger wrote:
> The solution I envision is that when one seeks funding or support for a DIY project she should sell the DIYBIO ethos itself. This
> endeavor can lead to a more considered perspective on one's own work (and then someone might try to monetize your idea).

I think Aaron is onto a big thing here, and I have "a little" to add. Selling is very necessary for any product -- it is wishful
thinking if you skip it. So then once you acknowledge a need for salesmanship/saleswomanship, comes the want for more team
members (to find more salespeople and tech support and accounting support also).

But is the VC club the only source of investment money and the only terms one can expect? In the low risk, low tech world of real
estate, there are plenty of mechanisms for getting money for projects and they don't even always sell ownership in a startup,
sometimes just loan interest. For example, a shopping center development company is all about construction management, and they
ask around for projects, and some of the projects are parcels of land held for 5 years or so by an investment group, a partnership
usually, so this case uses ownership to extract a return on capital used to purchase land and once the development company
completes the project it is sold retail and the land owners, (more like wholesalers), get paid and get their return. They only
get paid once the retail sale of a shopping center is ripe -- with shoppers ready to shop and traffic passing by the location up
to levels that support enough shoppers to pay the retail rents.

So, the real estate analogy to a bio startup... Where's that? It will take a little selling to put it in the mind's eye of an
investor, and you need to be an investor yourself. Think of what parts of your plan are very low risk and sell those. If there
are no low risk parts, your plan is toast, DOA, silly. The real estate analogs are the office you work in, the lab you build and
test in, and your track record of staying alive in business and paying your taxes.

The VC know that some parts of many plans are low risk after a substantial wait, and they decide to risk some accordingly, with
the knowledge that liquidating will recover some of the original investment and one success in ten will pay for all the rest. The
real estate type of investor won't suffer the VC level of risk even -- they demand that company liquidation returns more than the
investment during the life of the demographics waiting period before the building developer is involved and during project
development.

The part where you be the investor is analogous to the demographics waiting period before project development. You build a team
working on something very low risk and get them ready to keep the risk low during the ultimate project you envision. This may
seem hard to face -- that you cannot leap into what inspires you, but first have to build a functioning team, and your works is
something less exciting for a while and you have to *SELL* this less exciting concept. If that's unimaginable to you, the VC are
all that's left for your funding.

How would we sell the idea of a low risk, "training wheels" project, and to whom? Well, for example, I did a project with less
than necessary capital to arrive at a half-baked result, an electroporator with no plastic case, not ready for prime time since no
safety testing done yet, (since no protective case with safety interlocks against high voltage dangers), so incomplete and not a
speed up tool. The capital I could have had easily is the getting ready kind -- just finding some grunt work to pay the bills and
getting a survivor track record created. Then I could have shown my product ideas to real estate types of investors and they
would have few objections.

It's not easy to find grunt work to do to prove you can be in business, but it's not easy to make a home lab and many of us have
done that and can imagine a little more prep work before getting into the exciting phases of creation.

Speed is a very important thing. I was just about ready to get some techie grunt work, but lost my lab. My lab was in a house in
Austin TX as things started to get very expensive there -- like NYC or SF or LA, and the house needed to be sold. That reset the
timeline. Another thing is I got older -- some phases come ready or not.

So now I have a building block controller that can be the button pushing, user programmable in python, small readout displaying,
sequence generating, measuring, power converting guts to most any lab instrument of solar charger/converter/battery-manager.
Know anyone needing these kinds of guts for a project that are OSHW and some help using them? I'm for hire.


--
John Griessen in Albuquerque NM building lab gear for biologists

[Dan Kolis]

Noted :
" Reading two books recently: "Open-source lab" by Joshua Pearce and

                            "Building open source hardware" by Alicia Gibb"

I read the entries to "Dead or what" pretty carefully and didn't really light up with any specific conjectures except maybe to read / get / etc the books above...

Maybe there are some good animals extinct just the right amount and aren't taken yet by Harvard ?

You would think pollution abatement might work to getting investments ? Chem companies; like BASF, etc. 

Of course, most Bio projects fail horribly. That's a pretty basic fact, there...

Regs to All,

Dan

[Andrew Gray]

Hi all, i haven't been in this thread for a while, so apologies for the lack of contributions. In response to Dan, I think new platforms are being utilized for DIYbio-related discussions. Facebook, Reddit, Discords, I imagine there are more groups. I guess that's "decentralized" for you! Still, it's awesome to come back and see this Google group still ticking along and it was great to read all your thoughts.

I know from my perspective here in Melbourne Aus, there is a huge appetite for DIYbio in the wake of COVID due to a reduction in the number of hands-on training opportunities for students during our lockdowns.  

Love the previously mentioned, DITbio, people rarely showed up to just be on their own at our lab.

For context of what i'm going to talk about, i was inspired to help start BioQ here in Aus in 2015 (www.bioq.org.au, very much inspired by BioCurious) under a charity structure. From that lab, we saw various needs in our ecosystem and started a science equipment recycling program in 2018 (another charity), and then a biotech CoWorking space called CoLabs Aus in 2020 (finally learned and started a company/social enterprise). 

BioQ was difficult to run but the community was/is amazing. I didn't have any experience helping run a business, managing revenue, volunteers, projects, and grants, all while living on minimum wage, but i think that was/is par for the course in this space. In the end, i got enough exp doing that to help start CoLabs and learned A LOT about various fields.

There is absolutely a challenge with where VCs look at something that is coming out of shared lab spaces like a DIYbio/Community Lab and ask if the IP has been protected, does it have market fit, so on. I've been wondering about this for a while, and i'm exploring this with some IP lawyer friends. 

Is there a framework/commons that could be the best of both worlds? Support both open access and commercialization at the same time taking into account the needs of those involved? 

Generally, VCs are happy enough if they see everyone in the space has signed NDAs and consideration has been given to controlled access.

[Dan Kolis]

The VC world is plenty happy to convert nutrients to H20 + Urea on a huge scale. I mean, 'hunt the unicorn', then wait for layoffs due to nothing usable seems like a common plan.

 Again in the investment lingo; it is just 'widows and orphans' or do institutions fund endless go nowhere biotech, or what ? I don't know, I have tried to find out, and I am a little interested.

Like here in Toronto, the teachers Union has thrown in on Quantum computers FOR LIFE SCI, and the Fed and province peeled off millions for little analog computers that do exactly nothing, all blessed with urges based on Stat trek. I mean, That twisty thing on the screen, is that REAL DNA ?". How hard could this be ? Only took 45 seconds for Warf and some hottie to make a cure via an air blown med. Works first time perfectly, before the next commercial !

Ok. DIY or institutional, non-profit or whatever. Doing what took mother nature 100K years to do before a patent runs out, is not too easy.

Scale up a hobby, scale down a unicorn. Not so easy. When one atom in a molecule changes hugely what happens, its pretty tough stuff to tame.

regs,

Daniel B. Kolis

[Hans Wilms]

Does anyone know where these DIY groups are in the  Facebook, Reddit, Discords space? I feel like DIYbio has mostly died off compared to what it was in 2010s, but I'm hoping I'm just out of touch.

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[Andrew Gray]

Hans, there are a few out there. r/DIYbio (stay away from r/biohackers, it's a bit crazy) the fb group biohacking & genetic engineering, discord SciHouse (which hosted al #DIYbio on twitter. 

[jadams grg.org]

Members,

 

My name’s Johnny Adams. 

 

I recently moved to Florida to be active in two initiatives that I believe have the greatest potential for biological age management and reversal:

• Yamanaka/OSK gene therapy to reset the epigenome.  A therapy is a few years away.
• A plasma project involving therapeutic plasma replacement, infusion and exchange

 

It will initially be available in Florida, then in other parts of the country.

 

More information:

https://www.aginginterventionfoundation.org/JohnnyAdamsPlasmaProjectSummary.pdf

 

Please contact me if you have any interest.

 

Johnny

1-949-922-9786 cell

JAd...@AgingInterventionFoundation.org

 

[Hans Wilms]

Thanks Andrew! Didn't know about the discord. That seems helpful!

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/diybio/50bd46c0-4428-455a-9176-afdfeb4214b8n%40googlegroups.com.

[Daniel C.]

I am very interested in this list not being spammed with advertisements for quackery.

I especially like how you don't talk about rapamycin, the most effective anti-aging drug currently available, which is a generic medication and therefore not profitable.

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[Dakota Hamill]

ooo I love the story of Rapamycin and always start any talks around natural products with it.  In 1972 a group from Wyeth Brazil went to Easter Island and took soil samples from the edge of the extinct volcano there.  Originally Streptomyces hygroscopicus had a bio-active being pursued for anti-fungal properties.  Turns out it was an amazing immune suppressant (I do not know how this was tested).  Rapamycin, named after the native people's name for the island, Rapa Nui, is still used today to coat heart stents and after organ transplantation.  

The molecule has 15 chiral centers, and if you do 2^15 there are 32,768 unique isomers.   And a little microbe, eating decaying organic matter, with some oxygen, beautifully synthesizes an amazingly active molecule which is a multi billion dollar life saving medicine. 

I've never heard about its anti aging uses, would like to hear more. 

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[Daniel C.]

The effects of rapamycin are... complex.  Its primary use (right now) is as an immune system suppressant for transplant patients.  Anyone using it for anti-aging needs to be very careful about bacterial infections.  It should go without saying that this is not medical advice.

I don't think the mechanism by which rapamycin combats the effects of aging are understood.  Of course, aging itself is not well understood.

Here are some papers:

Rapamycin for longevity: opinion article

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6814615/

Rapamycin, the only drug that has been consistently demonstrated to increase mammalian longevity. An update

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0531556523000876

Cheers

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