This Weekend, Start Building a New Life Form

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:25:17 PST

In a few years, your weekend hacking project will involve bits of DNA and a PCR machine instead of a soldering iron or glue. With the help of the Open Wetware Project, and the Registry of Standard Biological Parts Wiki, you too can become an amateur synthetic biologist. But this isn't about evil mad scientist stuff. People using these new open-source biohacking tools are trying create helpful life forms, like insulin-producing bacteria or drought-tolerant crops. Here's a quick introduction to the biohacking tools everybody will be using tomorrow.

Registry of Standard Biological Parts [a wiki]. Start with the tutorial, just to get a flavor of what it means to take standard biological parts from a registry and put them together into a new organism. It's actually a lot simpler than you might think. This parts registry is a tool repository, but also a repository of information about biological parts that people have standarized, codified, and registered. A "part" isn't something like an arm — it's going to be something small, like an enzyme that affects a gene, or a protein that causes a particular biological state. Or perhaps a gene that will make you grow an arm.

Open Wetware Project [a community]. This is a clearinghouse community site for academics, students, and the public to share information about synthetic biology and biological engineering projects. You'll find classes, tutorials, and massive lists of laboratories working on biohacking. It's a great place to poke around and find out what people are really doing to create new life forms — and what their motivations are. Also, if you've got your own project or want to know more about an ongoing project, this the place to go to share ideas.

Programming DNA [a lecture] As we've mentioned before, MIT professor Drew Endy gave a smashing and fun introductory lecture about biohacking a couple of months ago at the Chaos Computer Congress in Berlin. If you want a crash course in how hacking a biological system can be like hacking a machine, load this one into your portable media device of choice and watch it during your commute (but only if you're not driving).

BioBricks Foundation [a standards body]. This is a non-profit formed by people from Harvard, MIT and UCSF in order to create standards for what counts as a "biological part." They're tackling legal and ethical issues, as well as strongly supporting the idea of making all information about biological parts and synthetic biology available for free to the public.

Open Biohacking Kit [via Sourceforge]. Get started on your biohacking project with this free software package. From the Sourceforge description:

This open, free synthetic biology kit contains all sorts of information from across the web on how to do it: how to extract and amplify DNA, cloning techniques, making DNA by what's known as oligonucleotides, and all sorts of other tutorials and documents on techniques in genetic engineering, tissue engineering, synbio (synthetic biology), stem cell research, SCNT, evolutionary engineering, bioinformatics, etc.

Image above is of a creature created with Maxis' forthcoming game Spore.

Grow Your Own Genetically-Engineered Bacteria

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:45:45 PST

Want to make the goo in a petri dish spell out the words "Hello World"? Now you can. Biopunk provocateur Quinn Norton is writing a five-part series for O'Reilly Radar about how you can start hacking yourself and your friends for fun (and, occasionally, profit). If her excellent introduction to biohacking isn't enough for you, download this Open Biohacking Kit from Sourceforge and get started with making glow-in-the-dark bacteria in your garage.

The Dos and Don'ts of Hacking Your DNA

Annalee Newitz — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 07:20:31 PST

Yes, there are biology hackers. They're scientists with wet labs who are reverse-engineering the genomes of fruit flies, mice, chimps, and (sometimes) humans. But pretty soon, the neighbor kid is going to be whipping up little half-human, half-possum creatures in her EZ Bake tissue engineering oven. That's why you need to watch MIT biology professor Drew Endy's lecture called "Programming DNA" from the recent Chaos Communications Congress in Berlin.

Endy is devoted to creating an open source bio-hackers community, and he does a great job explaining the biological machines in our bodies, as well as how we can start reprogramming them. Elliot Phillips has posted video of the entire hour-long lecture, which is a hell of a lot more riveting and mind-blowing than most prime-time TV shows. I urge you to check it out. 24c3 Hacking DNA [Hackaday] Image from Patricia Paccinini.

io9: drew endy

This Weekend, Start Building a New Life Form

Grow Your Own Genetically-Engineered Bacteria

The Dos and Don'ts of Hacking Your DNA