I'd like some advice please
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Jonny Scott
Jul 31, 2013, 8:32:58 PM7/31/13
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Hey, my name is Jonny Scott. I love science and I even have a facebook page called Jonny Science although its not that popular yet. So basically, I'm wanting advice on how to get started. I consider myself an inventor tho I've never actually made anything except my 3d printer which had instructions but I have all these ideas. I love trying to think of ways to solve everyday problems like how to make ethanol cheaper as a fuel source or building a home sized nuclear power plant or a nuclear car. One thing I want to do is try to create a genetically engineered bacteria that expels O2. So where do I start? How can I start genetic engineering at home or how do I make a lab. I'm a dirt poor DIY with only $400 to my name but I want to take steps to change the world somehow. Maybe make myself a superhuman on the way somehow. I found this group through biohacking on youtube which seemed fascinating. Theirs a guy who can rip phone books and bend cast iron featured on stan lee's superhumans. Wouldn't genetic manipulations be able to give everyone such strength? There's just so much I want to know in this world, so much I want to do and I dont know how to begin. College isn't getting me anywhere. Its just not fast enough for teaching me what I want to know. I had to spend an entire semester learning Ohms law in a class as a prerequisite for pre-engineering. How lame is that? Anyway, any advice is welcome such as ways to build a chemistry kit on a shoestring budget or how to do genetic experiments. I just have a thirst for knowledge so tell me anything thats cool or useful please.
William Heath
Aug 1, 2013, 3:38:30 AM8/1/13
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Hi Johnny,
I had the exact same problem when I was in school! There is a cure to this problem but it involves sacrifice, determination, and commitment. I could go on and on about all of my "opinions" etc... but my conclusion is that the best way to get into this exciting field is to get yourself on an iGem team, repeat all iGem experiments both with a computer simulation and with real lab procedures. Never take no for an answer and kick trash upon mediocrity!
-Tim
On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 2:32 PM, Jonny Scott <redrave...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hey, my name is Jonny Scott. I love science and I even have a facebook page called Jonny Science although its not that popular yet. So basically, I'm wanting advice on how to get started. I consider myself an inventor tho I've never actually made anything except my 3d printer which had instructions but I have all these ideas. I love trying to think of ways to solve everyday problems like how to make ethanol cheaper as a fuel source or building a home sized nuclear power plant or a nuclear car. One thing I want to do is try to create a genetically engineered bacteria that expels O2. So where do I start? How can I start genetic engineering at home or how do I make a lab. I'm a dirt poor DIY with only $400 to my name but I want to take steps to change the world somehow. Maybe make myself a superhuman on the way somehow. I found this group through biohacking on youtube which seemed fascinating. Theirs a guy who can rip phone books and bend cast iron featured on stan lee's superhumans. Wouldn't genetic manipulations be able to give everyone such strength? There's just so much I want to know in this world, so much I want to do and I dont know how to begin. College isn't getting me anywhere. Its just not fast enough for teaching me what I want to know. I had to spend an entire semester learning Ohms law in a class as a prerequisite for pre-engineering. How lame is that? Anyway, any advice is welcome such as ways to build a chemistry kit on a shoestring budget or how to do genetic experiments. I just have a thirst for knowledge so tell me anything thats cool or useful please.
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Cathal Garvey
Aug 1, 2013, 6:33:08 AM8/1/13
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Hey Jonny,
Here's some advice, but take it with a pinch of salt as it's just my
opinion.
> I even have a facebook page called Jonny Science although its not
> that popular yet.
Facebook is a terrible place to publish new content. Most stuff on
Facebook is fan-pages for real content elsewhere, and with good reason.
I'd strongly suggest that if you want to get any readership outside
your immediate circle of friends, you go to wordpress.com and set up a
blog there. Wordpress blogs can be modified so heavily with plugins
that they can end up looking nothing like a blog, so if you're looking
for something more like a website/photo gallery, you can do that to.
Just please, don't publish on Facebook! :)
> building a home sized nuclear power plant
If you search around, there are some great news articles about a fellow
who tried just that, years ago. To satisfy his obsession with getting a
sample of every known element on the periodic table (this was, I think,
before widespread knowledge of ultra-exotic
won't-exist-for-longer-than-picoseconds elements), he built a breeder
reactor in his shed. The ensuing hullabaloo over "contamination" (of
which there was almost certainly plenty) went way out of proportion to
the real risks, and his neighbourhood ended up being evacuated during
the cleanup of his shed-experiment. :)
SCIENCE!
> One thing I want to do is try to create a genetically engineered
> bacteria that expels O2.
Well, you probably know already that natural O2-creating bacteria
exist, and are abundant; cyanobacteria. Often called "blue-green
algae", they were responsible for one of the most widespread
mass-extinctions in Earth's history, because at the time very few
organisms could survive elevated oxygen!
There's a lot of research into ways to make cyanobacteria and "true
algae" consume CO2 faster, to try and kickstart a "bioremediation"
revolution against global warming and to create more biofuel, faster,
and more cheaply. This is a fascinating area to study, so don't be
scared off by competition! Photosynthesis is a fascinating system, and
different plants, algae and bacteria have evolved a great many systems
that could potentially be combined to increase their efficiency.
> lab. I'm a dirt poor DIY with only $400 to my name but I want to take
> steps to change the world somehow. Maybe make myself a superhuman on
> the way somehow.
You're in good company; a bunch of the regulars on this list are
transhumanists, and (as far as I can see) are lurking here with exactly
that intention. :)
> Wouldn't genetic manipulations be able to give everyone such strength?
Cautionary tale on self-engineering; we're not quite there yet.
Although there are rumours and allegations that some athletes have
invested in genetic engineering/cell therapies to enhance their natural
levels of erythropoitin/etc, I have my doubts. In an early study on
EPO-enhancement in baboons (why must we study on other Apes, ffs?), a
citation for which I can't give you (it was in a lecture I received
years ago), they shivved in an extra gene under a stronger promoter for
erythropoitin into the unfortunate baboons, and observed to see if
their stamina improved. Well, it did, but the baboons also became
highly prone to spontaneous blood clots, and had to be kept on
anti-clotting agents for the rest of their (doubtless short) lives.
Gene therapy is improving of course, and for some medical applications
it's already a practical solution where drug therapies fall short,
although it's still not used widely. But, like limb prostheses, while
the therapy is good if you have no other options, it's still not a good
idea if there's nothing wrong with you.
My advice is, grow your skills, lab and equipment set organically. With
$400 you can't repeat every igem project ever, but you can buy basic
equipment to start doing more modest experiments to develop your skills
and understanding. As you get more skill, equipment and resources, you
can start building up to more ambitious experiments.
If genetics is your goal, start with microbiology. Take your $400,
invest in the minimum you'll need to start teaching yourself
sterile/anexic culture of bacteria, yeast or plant tissues:
* Bunsen burner; you can get camping-gas-cartridge models from some
good brewing suppliers like brouwland.com (EU).
* Lab glassware: Likewise available from good brewshops like
brouwland.com, you'll want petri dishes, test tubes with caps, and
preferably some 10ml pippettes and a pippette filler.
* A pressure cooker: see if you know anyone who uses these and can show
you how to use one of these safely, because instructions vary by
model, and nasty steam-burns are easy if you do things wrong. You'll
need one of these for sterilising things.
* Pet Heater Mat and Thermostat, and a large polystyrene box, to make a
crude 30C incubator. Add some shallow dishes of water with copper
sulphate in them (as a biocide; recycle by redissolving with more
water, as it's toxic to wildlife when discarded) to keep things moist
and prevent your samples drying out.
* Food ingredients to make broths and agars: agar powder, low-salt
yeast extract, soy protein isolate, skimmed milk powder, glucose
powder, deionised water.
* Later, you'll want a centrifuge. You can get a safe, reliable one
from NCBE in the UK. I also sell a somewhat hazardous rotor that you
can attach to a dremel which, if you so choose, can be used as a
centrifuge at your own risk. It's powerful, but wear goggles and
don't blame me if anything goes wrong! Also, it'll kill your dremel
eventually. :) (never print in PLA, or it'll explode if you use it)
When you can grow bacteria, you can start learning to extract their
DNA, and then to put new DNA into them. Once you're at this level, you
ought to be able to take a plasmid like pGREEN (a plasmid that makes
bacteria fluorescent, available widely on this list and from
educational suppliers) and put it into your cells, before you progress
onwards.
From there, you've got your core set of skills: you can grow bacteria
and keep them pure/sterile, you can isolate plasmid DNA from them, and
you can put plasmid DNA into them. NOW you can consider your own
Synthetic Biology experiments; you study existing systems, combine
them, use good software to optimise them as needed, and fork out a
bunch of money to order some DNA never-before-seen. And then you find
out if it works or not. Probably not. So you try again until something
works.
It's a long road, but it's really rewarding, and fun. You never look
at the world the same way once you actually *work with* microbes. And,
along the way, you're far from unlikely to end up learning other random
skills. I ended up learning a lot about design and 3D printing in
creating my Dremelfuge, programming when creating PySplicer, and
bureaucracy/legislation when applying for a license to biohack in
Ireland. It's all worthwhile.
Good luck!
Here's some advice, but take it with a pinch of salt as it's just my
opinion.
> I even have a facebook page called Jonny Science although its not
> that popular yet.
Facebook is fan-pages for real content elsewhere, and with good reason.
I'd strongly suggest that if you want to get any readership outside
your immediate circle of friends, you go to wordpress.com and set up a
blog there. Wordpress blogs can be modified so heavily with plugins
that they can end up looking nothing like a blog, so if you're looking
for something more like a website/photo gallery, you can do that to.
Just please, don't publish on Facebook! :)
> building a home sized nuclear power plant
who tried just that, years ago. To satisfy his obsession with getting a
sample of every known element on the periodic table (this was, I think,
before widespread knowledge of ultra-exotic
won't-exist-for-longer-than-picoseconds elements), he built a breeder
reactor in his shed. The ensuing hullabaloo over "contamination" (of
which there was almost certainly plenty) went way out of proportion to
the real risks, and his neighbourhood ended up being evacuated during
the cleanup of his shed-experiment. :)
SCIENCE!
> One thing I want to do is try to create a genetically engineered
> bacteria that expels O2.
exist, and are abundant; cyanobacteria. Often called "blue-green
algae", they were responsible for one of the most widespread
mass-extinctions in Earth's history, because at the time very few
organisms could survive elevated oxygen!
There's a lot of research into ways to make cyanobacteria and "true
algae" consume CO2 faster, to try and kickstart a "bioremediation"
revolution against global warming and to create more biofuel, faster,
and more cheaply. This is a fascinating area to study, so don't be
scared off by competition! Photosynthesis is a fascinating system, and
different plants, algae and bacteria have evolved a great many systems
that could potentially be combined to increase their efficiency.
> lab. I'm a dirt poor DIY with only $400 to my name but I want to take
> steps to change the world somehow. Maybe make myself a superhuman on
> the way somehow.
transhumanists, and (as far as I can see) are lurking here with exactly
that intention. :)
> Wouldn't genetic manipulations be able to give everyone such strength?
Although there are rumours and allegations that some athletes have
invested in genetic engineering/cell therapies to enhance their natural
levels of erythropoitin/etc, I have my doubts. In an early study on
EPO-enhancement in baboons (why must we study on other Apes, ffs?), a
citation for which I can't give you (it was in a lecture I received
years ago), they shivved in an extra gene under a stronger promoter for
erythropoitin into the unfortunate baboons, and observed to see if
their stamina improved. Well, it did, but the baboons also became
highly prone to spontaneous blood clots, and had to be kept on
anti-clotting agents for the rest of their (doubtless short) lives.
Gene therapy is improving of course, and for some medical applications
it's already a practical solution where drug therapies fall short,
although it's still not used widely. But, like limb prostheses, while
the therapy is good if you have no other options, it's still not a good
idea if there's nothing wrong with you.
My advice is, grow your skills, lab and equipment set organically. With
$400 you can't repeat every igem project ever, but you can buy basic
equipment to start doing more modest experiments to develop your skills
and understanding. As you get more skill, equipment and resources, you
can start building up to more ambitious experiments.
If genetics is your goal, start with microbiology. Take your $400,
invest in the minimum you'll need to start teaching yourself
sterile/anexic culture of bacteria, yeast or plant tissues:
* Bunsen burner; you can get camping-gas-cartridge models from some
good brewing suppliers like brouwland.com (EU).
* Lab glassware: Likewise available from good brewshops like
brouwland.com, you'll want petri dishes, test tubes with caps, and
preferably some 10ml pippettes and a pippette filler.
* A pressure cooker: see if you know anyone who uses these and can show
you how to use one of these safely, because instructions vary by
model, and nasty steam-burns are easy if you do things wrong. You'll
need one of these for sterilising things.
* Pet Heater Mat and Thermostat, and a large polystyrene box, to make a
crude 30C incubator. Add some shallow dishes of water with copper
sulphate in them (as a biocide; recycle by redissolving with more
water, as it's toxic to wildlife when discarded) to keep things moist
and prevent your samples drying out.
* Food ingredients to make broths and agars: agar powder, low-salt
yeast extract, soy protein isolate, skimmed milk powder, glucose
powder, deionised water.
* Later, you'll want a centrifuge. You can get a safe, reliable one
from NCBE in the UK. I also sell a somewhat hazardous rotor that you
can attach to a dremel which, if you so choose, can be used as a
centrifuge at your own risk. It's powerful, but wear goggles and
don't blame me if anything goes wrong! Also, it'll kill your dremel
eventually. :) (never print in PLA, or it'll explode if you use it)
When you can grow bacteria, you can start learning to extract their
DNA, and then to put new DNA into them. Once you're at this level, you
ought to be able to take a plasmid like pGREEN (a plasmid that makes
bacteria fluorescent, available widely on this list and from
educational suppliers) and put it into your cells, before you progress
onwards.
From there, you've got your core set of skills: you can grow bacteria
and keep them pure/sterile, you can isolate plasmid DNA from them, and
you can put plasmid DNA into them. NOW you can consider your own
Synthetic Biology experiments; you study existing systems, combine
them, use good software to optimise them as needed, and fork out a
bunch of money to order some DNA never-before-seen. And then you find
out if it works or not. Probably not. So you try again until something
works.
It's a long road, but it's really rewarding, and fun. You never look
at the world the same way once you actually *work with* microbes. And,
along the way, you're far from unlikely to end up learning other random
skills. I ended up learning a lot about design and 3D printing in
creating my Dremelfuge, programming when creating PySplicer, and
bureaucracy/legislation when applying for a license to biohack in
Ireland. It's all worthwhile.
Good luck!
Jonny Scott
Aug 5, 2013, 10:56:42 PM8/5/13
to diy...@googlegroups.com
Wow. Thanks for the great advice. I didn't even know about iGem. I now have a new avenue to direct my personal research towards. I'm actually aware of the plethora of O2 producing microbes. My reasoning for wanting to genetically modify some is an idea I have to eliminate man's need to breath. I reason its possible to take the most oxygen demanding microbes in the human body and alter them to breath CO2. I want to use microbes already present in the human body since they already parasitize their energy from us and also to reduce the likelihood of making something dangerous or lethal tho I know its still a possibility. Also, it would not only eliminate an oxygen consumer in the body but make it an oxygen producer. The microbes in our lungs might be a good place to start if I ever can begin such research. If the need to breath was optional then it would open new avenues of exploration in space and in the ocean's depths. That's one project I'd like to work on anyway. Green fluorescent protein sounds like an excellent place to start and you gave some great advice on how to start building my first lab. Thanks for the suggestion. I will look into this more and maybe soon can start some post on making progress. Oh and I know facebook is awful for getting noticed but I'm actually a recluse so not being noticed is my thing. lol. I post interesting things I find mainly for my own benefit just so I have an organized space for it. If I do try to branch out in the future tho I will look into starting a blog. Thanks again for the advice and more is always welcome.
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Mega [Andreas Sturm]
Aug 8, 2013, 5:40:52 AM8/8/13
to diy...@googlegroups.com
Making oxygen will be very costful... One ATP releases, IIRC, some 36 ATP pre molecule glucose (2 are consumed to get the reaction going).
If you want to set oxygen free from CO2 , you will need exactly those 36 ATP.
So, they need to work anaerobically, thus they only produce 2 ATPs per molecule glucose. Thus they would have to use up 18 molecules glucose to release one oxygen atom from a CO2, right?
While in theory this could still work, the bacteria will then have a strong selective disadvantage... If you consume one E.Coli bacterium with your food that breaths aerobically, it will multiply much quicker than those others...
If you want to set oxygen free from CO2 , you will need exactly those 36 ATP.
So, they need to work anaerobically, thus they only produce 2 ATPs per molecule glucose. Thus they would have to use up 18 molecules glucose to release one oxygen atom from a CO2, right?
While in theory this could still work, the bacteria will then have a strong selective disadvantage... If you consume one E.Coli bacterium with your food that breaths aerobically, it will multiply much quicker than those others...
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