What is your biggest problem?

[Seth Donnelley]

As a young biologist, I would like to build a career on helping DIY bio and "biohacking" labs to grow and further advance science. I would like to know about your most painful, biggest problem with your lab, and why it's such a big problem for you (i.e. why it hasn't been solved yet). Reply by email or feel free to call me sometime at +1 484-889-5281.

Thanks for your time.

Seth Donnelley

[Chris Santos-Lang]

Thank you, Seth!

I am aware of three potential business opportunities that can help advance DIY Bio:

1. List of what needs to be tested. My church group wants to address the replication crisis by conducting replication studies, but it is very difficult for us to monitor the full range of journals to find-out what has already been replicated and what needs to be tested. I know of undergraduate programs, explorer posts, and student organizations who would be interested in helping to fill the replication need. The DIY bio community could be interested in taking assignments from the list, but would also be interested in adding assignment to the list--we want our own discoveries to be confirmed by others and being outside academia makes it more difficult to arrange.

2. Registry for testing bounties. Could be related to #1. Grant makers currently include budgets for open access publishing with every grant. Suppose they also included a bounty to cover supplies for the first X registered reports to pass peer-review for replication of whatever gets open access published? I understand that scientists currently spend 40% of their time applying for funding, but funding a replication study of what you just funded is a no-brainer. It should take hardly any time to arrange that kind of funding, and funders should not complain if bio hackers add additional measures to their replication studies, so they can also test their own hypotheses--voila! DIY bio funding solved (as well as some of the inefficiency of professional science)!  

3. GitHub for ethics review. Commercial IRB review currently costs thousands of dollars per protocol. It is possible to form ad-hoc IRBs and spend maybe just $50 as an honorarium for a consultant (plus a potential fee to use the platform)

 https://osf.io/39xhw/wiki/Initial%20Formation%20of%20a%20Committee/  

Best Wishes,

Chris Santos-Lang

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[Nathan McCorkle]

On Wed, Feb 20, 2019 at 8:40 AM Seth Donnelley <newbio...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> your most painful, biggest problem with your lab, and why it's such a big problem for you (i.e. why it hasn't been solved yet).

not enough lab space, not enough time and energy, not enough money,
not enough experience, not enough passionate peers and mentors.

I've been considering going back to school for a PhD for several
years, and the itch is getting more and more annoying, such that I'm
traveling to visit a potential graduate program lab soon. I had a lot
more energy when I was a teen working in my mom's kitchen and my
bedroom... still 90% of that energy and gumption to work under duress
or in non-optimal circumstances, but my Bachelor's program spoiled me
in terms of nice labs and free/prepared sterile media. Having a kid
and thinking about sterilizing a bunch of contaminated cultures in the
kitchen is really unappealing.

[Seth Donnelley]

Thank you for your detailed feedback! I would be interested in speaking with you by phone sometime if possible. My number is +1 484-889-5281, let me know when if you would be OK with that. 

For #1 and #2, have you spoken to many PIs in traditional labs to see if this is something they would want to do?

For #3, what do you mean by "honorarium for a consultant"? What would this person consult on?

Thank You.

Seth

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[Seth Donnelley]

Thanks! Much of that sounds like me as well. I will try to help you as best I can. Stay tuned!

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[Dakota Hamill]

You're doing the right thing if you want to build a business, which is ask questions directly to potential customers.  You may find some people keep tight lips because they're trying to do the same thing.  I feel like there was a heck of a lot more content and energy on here 4-5+ years ago but naturally things wax and wane. A lot of people on here have started companies doing pretty cool stuff or started their own makerspace/hackerspace whatever you want to call it.  They found an answer(s) to the question you've asked and solved it or are trying to solve it.  So I guess I'd say the majority of people on here have the personality type that where there is a will, there is a way.  Access to reagents isn't that bad if you do a little searching and hunting.  Equipment isn't that bad if you spend a few hours on ebay or LabX.

There's no doubt a market for amateur scientists, and I believe schools as well.  Most schools default to Carolina Biological or BioRad kits.  Give them something better.

I don't know shit about electronics or EE really but I've been spending some spare time and money on Arduino kits etc.  It's fun and it's INSANE how many things you can buy for...pennies.  That's not the case really for a lot of bio/chem stuff.  That aside, I think the BIGGEST area to add value is very clear videos/instructions on what to do.

It's easy to stockpile chemicals and reagents but if you have no purpose or guidance on what to do with them they're a hammer looking for a nail.  I don't know if that analogy makes sense in this case but I used it!  For Arduino the # of tutorials and very clear guided instructions are great because I know exactly what I'm doing with all the pieces in my toolkit.  If I buy 500g of 20 metal salts, wtf am I really going to do with that?  My lab will be stocked and look cool, but all I can do is grow crystals.  

If I get 10 restriction enzymes and Taq and pipettes and a thermal cycler, wtf am I really going to do with that? If you can't read a plasmid map or design primers you're again wandering aimlessly.  That's also why people go to school or get a job.  Science really is like a trade.  A carpenter learns to frame a house, build a roof, do finish carpentry, use multiple tools and knows WHEN to use them and when to use something else.  They generally learn from years to an entire life of apprenticeship, journeyman, master, etc. 

I believe science is taught quite poorly in primary schools and even universities.  It's 95% memorization and testing, 4% hands on lab-work (with a pre-made protocol), and 0-1% "thinking" about what to do.  If I give you all the tools to solve a problem and then give you the recipe on how to solve it, you've basically learned nothing.

The best professor at my school got FIRED because students complained he was "to hard" because he made them think.  He was the type to give them an organic chemistry reaction and told them to pick their own solvents.  What polarity solvent should I use? Hmm water, ether, or dichloromethane? Well we're working with non-polar materials so water is out.  What about it's boiling point and flash point and general ease of handling?  DCM is probably the better option here!   Think about that, in the real world, when you're doing new things, there is no recipe book, you need to be able to go into the ol tool box and think about how to solve problems.  

I'm rambling now but the point is, I'd try to just mimic what Adafruit did for electronics but for bio.  Sell tools, but also sell small recipe books on how to build stuff to build skills.  Then there can be more challenging things people can move onto where there won't be a recipe book.  

Yeah that may be a useless rant but, take from it whatever you can.  I'd also try to focus on what you're good at.  Are you a biologist, chemist, coding wizard, graphic design guru? 

My biggest pet peeve is the "lab markup" on equipment, which some on here have helped with like OpenPCR, miniPCR etc. 

Want a pair of tweezers? $1 at CVS.  Lab tweezers? $50 at VWR.  College fridge? $35.  Lab fridge? $500.  Metal cabinet? $10.  Chemical storage cabinet? $2,500. I could go on and on with that!

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[Dakota Hamill]

I'd also add that if you'd like to increase your chances of getting feedback contribute whatever you can to the group in terms of ideas you have or projects you're working on or considering or even a small background bio.  Start a blog about how you're building your venture. Put it all out there in the open, good and bad, successes and failures.  This is definitely a give and take place kind of working on a virtual barter system of information and ideas. People who get to know you and trust you are more likely to divulge things to you or support you than they would a stranger looking to commercialize their ideas or sell them something.    Good luck!

[Seth Donnelley]

Thanks! That was very insightful. If possible, I would be interested in speaking by phone sometime, especially about to what degree I should "put it all out there" online, as I have some reservations about this; not for people stealing ideas, but because this isn't taking action. However, I can see your point as well, about building trust. My number is 484-889-5281, call me anytime.

Seth

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[Rednaz]

You seem more interested in speaking with people than group chat. Perhaps you should start a podcast temporarily and get ideas from people. Bioengineering podcast are on the rise at the moment so it may even get a little attention.

[Seth Donnelley]

Really? That's interesting. I would really to focus on the main things at this early stage, though. I mean that some people, I'd like to speak to directly, following and in addition to Google Group / email communication. I see it as a logical sequence: email/group -> speaking conversation.

On Wed, Mar 6, 2019 at 9:22 PM Rednaz <thez...@gmail.com> wrote:

You seem more interested in speaking with people than group chat. Perhaps you should start a podcast temporarily and get ideas from people. Bioengineering podcast are on the rise at the moment so it may even get a little attention.

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[Seth Donnelley]

After starting this thread, I have been thinking some more. Now, I have a serious question for everyone who reads this.

As someone in the DIYbio community, do you have a desire to pursue socially impactful projects, or is this more for fun?

Most people I've met make me think they are in the "for fun" category, but how many are really serious about changing the world?

Seth

[Andreas "Mega" Stuermer]

"do you have a desire to pursue socially impactful projects, or is this more for fun?"

Speaking for myself, I have been pushing for the most meaningful projects in the last years. But it gets quite frustrating. 

The more sophisticated it gets, like producing plants that have higher photosynthetic efficiencies and thus grow faster and sequester more CO2 (yes, that actually works https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/genetically-engineered-tobacco-does-more-efficient-photosynthesis-65286 ) the more regulation you have. Deregulation costs you a hefty 200 million dollars and 15 years of approval processes and testing. While you can irradiate plant seeds with gama rays and induce thousands of unwanted random mutation and that requires no safety testing. 

There's certainly no business model for safing the planet (under current regulations definitely not) and hence we'll see Florida and the Netherlands under water within 5-10 years, more and longer droughts due to less powerful jet stream (you need the temperature difference between poles and equator that drives atmospheric circulation, and climate change disproportionally heats the poles) and even more dead zones than we already have in the oceans due to the decline in thermohaline circulation. Once the oceans get anoxic enough, they completely tip and release toxic hdrogen sulfide (easily digestible form: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event#Hydrogen_sulfide_emissions ~ https://wileyearthpages.wordpress.com/2005/06/01/hydrogen-sulfide-and-mass-extinction/ ). Reading tons of actual primary literature on this, I think we have somewhere between 20 and 100 years left until the planet becomes euxinic and every mammal and reptile dies. The oceans will be empty long before. 

Hope this hasn't become off-topic too much but it's what came up to your question

[Chris Santos-Lang]

For me, there is a sense of responsibility.

I think some people start for the fun, but then they accidentally discover something, and being the discoverer makes them feel a sense of responsibility. Since having fun puts you at risk of developing responsibility, even having fun (in diybio) is socially responsible behavior.

Best Wishes,

Chris

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[Seth Donnelley]

Yes, well put. Thanks for your insight!

Seth

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[Seth Donnelley]

Hmm, this is definitely a big issue, and not easily solvable (at least not on the individual level). An aside, what do you think of report that all large animals will be gone by 2026?

Seth

--

[Chris Santos-Lang]

I like this practical response:

https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/can-1-man-photograph-every-animal-species-on-earth  

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[Seth Donnelley]

Yes, very interesting. Thanks for sharing!

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[Koeng]

My biggest problem is that the cost to clone plasmids is too damn high.

I’m not sure if there is a difference between wanting to change the world and having fun, for me it’s sort of the same thing. By the time I’m done, the cost to clone plasmids (relative to now) will not be too damn high.

-Koeng

[Seth Donnelley]

Yes, I agree. That is one aspect of many different issues of DNA-related work that are prohibitive to amateurs (others I've seen are sequencing and synthesis...)

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