Singularity Hub
mostromundo
http://singularityhub.com/2009/10/29/open-hardware-for-molecular-biology-experiments/#more-8317
Bryan Bishop
> DIYbio (and Tito) got a mention on Singularity Hub yesterday,
>
> http://singularityhub.com/2009/10/29/open-hardware-for-molecular-biology-experiments/#more-8317
Here is the previous one.
http://singularityhub.com/2009/04/29/who-is-diybioorg/
There's also the long-ish interview I gave .. I don't think I've
posted it here before, and now that I look back it's still relevant to
open source hardware. Tito, when will you start collaborating more
with us?
http://singularityhub.com/bryan_bishop_interview.pdf
"""
SH: Would you see open manufacturing as part of a common workspace
(like Mac Cowell's
group wetlab workshops concept)?
BB: Yes, absolutely. The idea of open and free manufacturing is to
bring the advantages of the tools of
free and open source software (F/OSS) to the world of hardware,
whether that means acquiring raw
materials and bootstrapping technologies from nothing, or if it means
just recycling materials from
around a city and making something more useful out of the local Freecycle group.
SH: Well then, can you give us some examples of open manufacturing
possibilities that the
average person might see in the next 5 years?
BB: It's really interesting to see open manufacturing in progress. In
particular what we're seeing is
different groups like instructables, odesigns, ponoko, thingiverse,
unptnt, etc., which have repositories
of hardware designs, but the repositories tend to be unstandardized
and not made up of CAD files.
Don't get me wrong, instructables is absolutely awesome- the ideal of
having automatically generated
instructions for DIYbio is really, really neat. What if you could just
ask your computer for the protocol
instructions for a certain procedure? What if you could then ask it
how to build the requisite
machinery? That would be amazing, and lightyears ahead of the current
situation-- the current situation
being, dumpster diving, hoping that you have enough money to get
started in your personal pursuits in
DIYbio, etc.
So, one thing that people are seeing is an increased number of
different spaces set up around the world.
Hackerspaces, dorkbot, mensheds, fablabs, and to some small extent,
techshops, have been sprouting
up all over the place. In Australia, the entire menshed movement is
based off of the idea of "bringing
back the shed"-- it's something that you don't see very much of
anymore in backyards. They somehow
were able to spin it into a men's health issue, so they're also
getting guys out of the pub and into the
shop, which is pretty neat.
SH: How do you think the broader DIY and Made movements translate into
the DIY synthetic
bio movement?
BB: Cultural explosions like O'Reilly and Make Magazine provide
energetic people making lots of
dinky LED projects. Maybe those outlets will transform into bigger and
better projects over time. I'm
not sure if they are going to naturally turn into heavy-duty
engineering, of the sort that is required for
engineering and manufacturing, but I'm hopeful because the interest is
definitely being cultivated.
SH: Will DIYbio produce serious engineering? If so, how?
BB: Don't get me wrong, I think there are some serious engineering
people involved in DIY and Make,
it's just that on average there's no platform for shared engineering,
or agreement that any sort of
platform has to be used in the first place. For instance, at the
moment, it's now fairly agreeable in
computer culture that you have to transmit ASCII or Unicode files
around, and we're not even really
there yet with DIY- we're still sending JPEGs of machines! But there
are those who don't use JPEGs,
and some who couldn't care less. So there's a bit of a chasm there,
like with anything you have those
who have some detailed technical interest in the back-end of things,
and on the other hand you have
people that just want to get going and rock and roll. So, what I think
might happen is that the debian
"package maintainer" model might be set up, so that people bring in
projects, and they are "packaged
up" into nice packages with a bow-tie and all. This means that
hardware and projects of high quality
become more repeatable and more standardized. Of course, this isn't
limited to DIYbio, but DIYbio
does make for a nice introductory project for this sort of system to
hit the scene--- for PCR, a protocol
to amplify strands of DNA, you only have to manipulate volumes and
temperatures as your main
variable constraints on the problem space. So it's an easier
playground for something like that to
happen, as opposed to the entire domain of DIY. Of course, this has
already happened with electronics
and legos, although I still don't know why electronics left behind
mechanical design.
SH: If someone was interested in joining DIYbio, what would they need?
Obviously much would
be project dependent, but could you give some broad guidelines? Are
there essential machines,
baseline amounts of cash, certain levels of expertise?
BB: To join DIYbio, you don't really need much of anything except an
understanding that this is hard.
The trick is making everything simple. So, if you have no cash, that
makes things harder. And if you
don't have access to the scientific literature, that makes things
harder. Not impossible, though. It just
means that you have to run even quicker to try to get going. It's
genuinely hard- although some
individuals find clever ways to get by with what they have- for
instance, I know of a biohacker who has
been playing around with moss cultures for a while now, since he had
the tools to make that happen.
Learning in an academic lab where everything is handed to you is not
so much the same as when you're
on your own- even with a great support network of DIYbioers.
SH: What kinds of projects might excel in the DIY environment? Mac
Cowell mentioned biofuel
as a problem whose solution may be found among many smaller
researchers rather than a few
large facilities. Can you think of similar examples?
BB: Projects that excel especially well in the DIY circles are those
that can be readily performed by
anyone. For instance, a few months ago I released some notes on what I
call "sharpie microfluidics",
where you take two slides of glass, draw the same pattern of two
parallel lines on both surfaces, and
you wrap two strips of tape into two separate circles as a spacer
between the two pieces of glass, and if
you add a drop of water, you now have surface-tension confined
microfluidics. Within a day I had so
many people playing around with these devices.
Another neat project was Ben Lipkowitz and Tito Jankowski's "keiki
gels", or polyacrylamide gels in a
polypropylene straw, the same type of straw that you find in a
restuarant. Gel electrophoresis is used to
size separate different biomolecules, so it's an important technique,
maybe one of the most basic of
them all. That hit the news within three days after people started
playing around with straws all over
the place.
Overall I would have to say that the projects that use common
every-day materials are more likely to
become quickly adopted or tested out by others, although in some cases
you just can't so easily get
around having to use expensive reagents. Maybe that will change.
Biofuel is an interesting project-
many people with fish tanks are already cultivating lipid-filled
algae, who knows where that might go
next.
Really it's an issue of "building up" infrastructure. Gel
electrophoresis, thermocyclers, etc., are
common projects right now. Once we get these going, it's on to bigger
and better things. But the
groundwork has to happen first.
SH:What sort of regulation would be necessary?
BB: I don't think regulation is necessary. Regulation is tough in this
area. DIYbio is biology-
everything human is biology. You're biology, I'm biology- so if you
start regulating biology, you start
getting into some very murky waters, very quickly, into important
areas like personal freedom. I don't
like the siren alarms calling for regulation or discussion on possible
regulations because they always
take the approach of the precautionary principle, rather than the
proactionary principle. The
proactionary principle is as follows: "People’s freedom to innovate
technologically is highly valuable,
even critical, to humanity. This implies several imperatives when
restrictive measures are proposed:
Assess risks and opportunities according to available science, not
popular perception. Account for both
the costs of the restrictions themselves, and those of opportunities
foregone. Favor measures that are
proportionate to the probability and magnitude of impacts, and that
have a high expectation value.
Protect people’s freedom to experiment, innovate, and progress."
SH: What about related hardware, dangerous chemicals, fire hazards, etc?
BB: There are systematic ways to deal with problems related to
malfunctioning hardware, toxins, even
pathological threats. Through the standardized packaging of DIYbio
projects, hardware components,
etc., I think that these issues will be covered- imagine being able to
casually request the MSDS, or
"material safety datasheets" on all components involved in your
experiment, plus instructions on what
to do in case of problems, and having all of this sitting on your
bench in a giant binder. This is really
important, and it's something computers excel at. It's win-win.
SH: In a quick summary, give me your greatest hope and your greatest
concern for DIYbio in the
next year.
BB: I genuinely hope that DIYbio continues to make progress- both in
the lab and around the world.
Many great things are in the pipeline related to personal
pharmaceuticals, lab instrumentation,
automated design, things that academic labs don't need but amateurs
need more than they might realize.
I do not believe that DIYbio is going to "crumble" from external
regulatory pressures but rather it has
to make sure that it doesn't crumble from within. It's a relatively
healthy, growing group at the moment,
and the only concern is if that trend doesn't continue into the
future. It would be too much of a set back.
"""
Cathal Garvey
Congratulations Tito on that fine feature! So Pearl's making an open cycler? Tell me more!