The Thought Emporium is one of my favorite YouTubers, he makes videos about DIY genetic engineering and I have a huge amount of respect for his rigor and detail.
In one of his videos he talks about sourcing lab supplies and he listed The Odin as the one place you should "avoid at all costs".
"Not a single kit they sent me worked", was pretty damning.
He lists all the reasons he doesn't like using them including the fact that they have sent him totally wrong supplies, and overcharge for most of their stuff.
I have to just say, as interesting as the videos are, The Thought Emporium has some... I guess questionable ethics. They've been repeatedly critiqued for overuse of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in their experiments, and they dismiss it by saying antibiotic-resistant bacteria is already everywhere (yes it is, and the problem is going to get a lot worse if people promote using that as carte blanche to do whatever), and openly discuss how they skirt animal experimentation rules using technicalities like cooking the fish you harvested live brain matter from (you can argue whether the rules are too stringent, but treating ethics as some annoyance to hack around is blatantly missing the point). This doesn't detract from his shopping recommendations, but it does speak to the sort of concerns people have with the way the space operates generally. It's very "myopic engineer sees problem that needs fixing".
As a parent of a child with a genetic disorder for which it is perfectly possible to develop a therapy using current technology, I'm delighted to see that biohackers are stirring things up. Let's hope this inspires the industry to rethink their approach to drug development.
I'm sorry for your child, but I'm not delighted. The guy that you can see in one of the pictures drinking from a glass recipient was in a Netflix documentary (I can't remember the title from top of my mind) where he was advocating for everyone being able to use genetic engineering for self-improvement, even without any previous knowledge of genetics. And this is what I take issue with. Sure genetic engineering has a lot of potential and could be used even to treat your child, but as every powerful tool, it has to be used by capable hands. Putting it freely in the hands of people that don't fully understand it (and I'm myself into that group) has the potential of creating great damages.
> The guy that you can see in one of the pictures drinking from a glass recipient was in a Netflix documentary (I can't remember the title from top of my mind) where he was advocating for everyone being able to use genetic engineering for self-improvement, even without any previous knowledge of genetics.
You mean the documentary unnatural selection. I have seen it, but I recall something quite different. He did infact advocate that at some point people will use this technology without understanding it. It surely feels like a premature opinion, but in retrospect people use many life changing technologies without understanding them either
Does everyone understand what they eat? how electricity works? how their smartphone works? the drugs their doctor prescribes?
Broad-scale co-evolution means that if you use your co-evolved common sense on the co-evolved natural world, you will broadly speaking be safe. Even with a bit of experimentation on the fringes. Our technological world has then co-evolved with our common sense, which is why despite the several ways our houses have things running through them which can kill us, they don't manage to do it very often.
When you start playing with genetic engineering directly, you're stepping out of your co-evolved "common sense" space into a much more vicious domain, and you get a double-whammy in that not only is this space much more vicious, you are also very very much trying to interact it with intuition built by interactions completely unsuitable for it.
No, people do not understand what they eat, how electricity works, or how their smartphone works, but they are co-evolved with all those things. You are not co-evolved with the results of genetic engineering. You are also not co-evolved with raw exposure to the space of all possible drugs, which is why I left that one out of my list. Notice the incredibly more strict protocols our society uses around those than we use for food, electricity, or smartphones, because we are not co-evolved with arbitrary drug chemicals. None of the other three things are unregulated by any stretch of the imagination, but neither are they regulated to the extent that pharmaceuticals are.
Genetic engineering has a degree of danger beyond anything you are co-evolved with. I'm not directly arguing very much further than "you can't analogize it with anything you are familiar with"; it's a rich question. From a certain point of view (and a pretty good one at that) my entire point is that the question is exponentially more complicated than you are giving it credit for; I'm not trying to actually answer it, implicitly or otherwise. I mean "exponentially" quite carefully and mathematically; part of the co-evolution is that it selects a much, much smaller subset of possibilities out of the full exponential space, resulting in a much smaller "space of interest".
- it is immoral to genetically experiment on others (especially children) without their consent.
- individuals should have the right to attempt to genetically engineer themselves if they wish: if they understand and accept the risk society should not seek to stop them.
I might agree with that second one provided that germ line isn't affected. If it is, then their changes affect future generations.
I'm also curious if there are any scenarios where this might be used on a host and an infectious agent is present in the host which shares the right cut point to create some unknown mutation. It's probably 1 in a million, if it's even possible. But it's interesting to think about.
If you accept that damage to the future genetic health of your descendants due to an action you take is unacceptable do you agree that failing to remedy an obvious genetic flaw in yourself is equally unacceptable? Why or why not?
Human mutations arise in two major settings: the germline and soma. Germline mutations occur in sperm, eggs, and their progenitor cells and are therefore heritable. Somatic mutations occur in other cell types and cannot be inherited by offspring. Somatic and germline mutations matter in health and disease.
I agree. I too am scared by the idea of some random person playing around with genetics.
We don’t allow anyone and everyone to play around with nuclear technology. I wish no one had ever played with nuclear technology. We would have avoided a lot of harm already caused. And a lot of harm that is surely yet to come, because ‘yet’ is a very long time. Infinite even.
And maybe nuclear genetics will nonetheless develop in the hands of power seeking governments. But it’s still better than Steve from 2 streets over accidentally unleashing a strain of resistant bacteria on the neighborhood.
>Does everyone understand what they eat? how electricity works? how their smartphone works? the drugs their doctor prescribes?
True, but you always have to balance them with the potential issues that could arise. I don't understand how drugs works, and that's why I need a doctor's prescription to take them. Many people don't know much about electricity, and that's why there are laws regulating how electric wirings have to be made and that say that only trained electricians can do wirings in homes. Many people don't understand how smartphones work, but what's the greatest damage that can result from this and how likely is it to happen?
I mean... regulations are actually a lot more flexible than you're implying.
I was looking to wire up some solar panels to a cottage in the countryside. Since municipal regulations didn't apply, provincial ones did, which were that if you've built the structure for your own occupancy and follow the electrical code, this is completely legal.
So the code applies, but it's not restricted to trained electricians in some cases.
Same goes for drugs in much of the world. Personally I think it's a little ridiculous people need to get a script for stuff like viagra or tretinoin or finasteride.
It becomes almost farcical when online clinics exist which will do a consultation without obtaining medical records or even seeing you via video and write you a script. Or that celebrities can get private doctors who will write them whatever. Or when you consider most countries outside NA and the EU where you can get pretty much whatever you want OTC.
Not to mention you can order TONS of different research chemicals and "nootropics", completely legally, online.
If you were to pass a regulation that was essentially "only registered genetic engineers can experiment in any way with this" it would be way more restrictive than anything we have for pharmaceuticals, or even domestic electricity.
What you're suggesting would be on par with regulations for nuclear technology. IDK seems maybe a bit excessive...
That wasn't what I was suggesting. I think it is reckless to try to persuade people into trying genetic engineering on themselves (one of the examples that the man showed in the documentary, was about injecting into your arm modified cells to make your muscles grow bigger).
But I'm fine with people using kits to have fun making a plant that glows in the dark, as long as they take care of not releasing the results of their experiments in the environment.
Absolutely agree. And while I don't recommend anyone to try this out on a DIY basis, historically a lot inventions we take for granted and have made our life better came from people literally tinkering around with stuff and slowly figuring out what works.
Do any of these mature technologies, tested by time, limited by safety standards or implemented by trained experts result in unknown genetic damage passed down to uncountable generations? (please don't say smartphones). These transhuman/biohacker talking points really don't stand up to mild scrutiny.
Starting from a baseline of people being able to make rational choices that further their own goals, who cares? Just don't go out of your way to make it seem safer than it is, and let people captain their lives through whatever risks they see fit.
I'm inclined to agree with you; the thought of just "some dude" mucking about with the genetics of a virus is horrifying.
And yet, computers are extremely powerful tools, arguably the most powerful we have created.
And look what free access to them has accomplished... Sure, it has caused quite a bit of cyber crime, but it's all balanced out by a massive amount of open and freely exchanged innovation.
Now imagine an alternate history where we somehow restricted access to programming to people with computer science degrees working under registered companies... I think that history would be pretty regressive.
So I think your reaction is understandable, I share it, but also hold some significant doubts.
Your genome is so much more complex than C - if you can't appreciate that, it sort of reinforces the fact that average people should not muck around in it. I, a computer programmer with a fancy degree in biochemistry, would not touch this stuff without a significant amount of work up front to understand what I am messing with.
I appreciate that, and also appreciate that absolutely nobody has the ability to understand the complete workings of a modern computer -- from the OS to the assembly, to the micro-architecture of the silicon, memory, networking, etc.
Even just having an expert level in any one of those pieces is a serious undertaking.
Similarly, albeit to a vastly greater degree, nobody entirely understands the multitude of cellular machinery, their interactions, their chemical processes, or encoding, in any species. Even 50% in a single organism is probably lifetimes away.
So yeah, biohackers are equal parts arrogant, reckless, and stupid... Life should be given appropriate respect, and it's hard to see how "DIY bioengineering" doesn't spit in the face of that.
Yet I would hate to see a future where people are barred from their own physiology, their own code. Removing your right to mess with your own life just seems authoritarian and oppressive to me, at the most fundamental level.
Editing OTHER people's genome should be highly regulated, as well as anything that has the potential to reproduce outside a controlled environment. This of course includes microbes within your own body, viral infections, gut bacteria, etc.
But I think people not being able to edit their own code is horrifically dystopian. Should probably be a requirement that you also have your reproductive rights removed too though, since your descendants wouldn't have a say.
> But I think people not being able to edit their own code is horrifically dystopian. Should probably be a requirement that you also have your reproductive rights removed too though, since your descendants wouldn't have a say.
This is a hysterical overreaction to what I said. First of all, no one is stopping you for editing your own code - you can stand out in the sun all day and pick up point mutations until they kill you. Go to the gym, and your body will start upregulating certain protein factors to repair muscle. Change your diet and your gut microbiome will change. If you can find some radioactive rocks, you can really go to town! No one is stopping you.
What I am saying is that you are so grossly underinformed about the complexity of the genome and human biochemistry, that to even compare it to computer architecture can only be described as arrogance. People who alter their genomes in any measurable way will mostly suffer greatly and die a painful death, so yeah, it should probably be regulated to professionals for the foreseeable future.
> Editing OTHER people's genome should be highly regulated, as well as anything that has the potential to reproduce outside a controlled environment. This of course includes microbes within your own body, viral infections, gut bacteria, etc.
What happens if a virus picks up your mutation and spreads it throughout the population?
You can't kill yourself writing c++ code, a buggy local server means your webpage is down, you aren't advocating for making your own insulin analyzer firmware, and using it for people whiout diabetes symptoms.
You can absolutely kill yourself writing C++ code...
To my shame, I almost did when I was fucking around with a microcontroller hooked up to some fairly powerful motors.
Not everyone uses code to make smartphone apps and video games, or computer applications. A vast amount is used to control everything from your car to your toaster :/
edit: Oh, I also botched the charging for some lithium ion cells and caused them to combust.
Shit, now I feel like I'm refuting your point about death-by-C++, but also supporting that we need more regulations to protect against idiots like myself.
>A vast amount is used to control everything from your car to your toaster :/
True, and hopefully after the Therac-25 incident we learned that, while it is generally fine having people playing with programming, for certain applications it is best to leave it to professionals with a deep understanding of what they're doing.
>Shit, now I feel like I'm refuting your point about death-by-C++, but also supporting that we need more regulations to protect against idiots like myself.
Yes, we likely need more regulation, at least for safety critical applications (but I don't know if those are already in place).
I'm reminded of the people putting open source firmware on insulin pumps. You have to either really trust yourself, or really distrust the system, to do something like that.
There's a huge community of people actively doing this. Type 1 diabetics were tired of waiting for a "closed loop" (aka artificial pancreas) insulin delivery system so they developed their own. One open source project is called Loop https://loopkit.github.io/loopdocs/ It's very mature and I know a few people who have been using it for years.
not diabetic but if my life depended on firmware in a embedded device, you can best be sure I'd want the source code out there so that people smarter than I and not just people at the company could audit the shit out of that source code.
> I'm delighted to see that biohackers are stirring things up. Let's hope this inspires the industry to rethink their approach to drug development.
I joined a biohacker Discord a while ago out of curiousity.
One of the channels was dedicated to getting a Chinese company to synthesize a pipeline pharmaceutical that was being researched in mice by some company. The people in the channel didn't want to wait for the human trials to experiment on themselves.
Long story short, they got a synthesis and paid thousands to confirm its purity. Several people took it and experienced some extremely concerning, potentially life threatening side effects. I noped out of the Discord because I didn't want to be associated with that group in any way after watching how they operated.
Genetic engineering is a whole new level of potential problems.
Are you sure it’s possible? There is a lot of hype around biotech and CRISPR, but we still can’t safely and reliably edit DNA in a living person, except in a few specific cases where the nature of the disease makes it especially easy.
I'd imagine they'll stir up the pharmaceuticals market as much as meth cooks did. If someone makes an actual advancement with these kits, watch him get bought out tout de suite.
Big mood, I've been fantasizing about a building a wet lab at home for years. There are like 5 people actively doing research on my illness worldwide and the latest experimental treatment would be two grands a week at retail prices.
Last time something genetics based was developed fast, and succesful, quite a few people went on the fences over it: Covid mRNA vaccines.
There are reasons why medical development takes time and money. And why rare diseases are underserved. And no amount of "disruption" is going to change the simple question of cost in that equation. So if VCs want to change that, they can simply use some of their "free" billions to fund proper development and research.
About Us: "At The ODIN, we believe the future is going to be dominated by genetic engineering and consumer genetic design will be a big part of that."
At Cyberdyne Systems, we believe the future is going to be more autonomous, more intelligent and consumer built jet-powered laser-equipped battle bots will be a big part of that.
Yes. There will be autonomous weapon platforms everywhere regardless of our desires, both from nation-states and non-state actors. To defend from them, you might want to understand how they work, and how they are built.
Oh, so that's what Odin is doing. Ensuring a safe, ethical future for our children.
Autonomous weapons will literally be the result of our desires. Their absence could be as well, depending on what we do next. Making them go the way of bioweapons, blinding lasers or the neutron bomb will also require effective coordinated regulation, political will and cultural pressure, including publicly shaming those that seek to profit from the unethical use of new technologies.
It doesn't work like this. If there is a war, there is always a possibility for it to escalate to an existential war. If there is an existential war, every possible weapon will be developed to the greatest extent possible to ensure the survival of your side. "The regulation" doesn't work when your country is attacked by an aggressor, and there are aggressors out there.
So, unless there is a global world peace forever, which I currently don't see happening any time soon, next generation weapons will be developed. If we are lucky, they will remain deterrents. If we are less lucky, they will be used in the actual world war, which has a very high probability of actually happening.
There were no instances of weapons regulated away, except for biological/chemical weapons which are less useful to developed countries. Nuclear weapons are still there. Landmines are still there. Cluster bombs are still used right now. No end in sight.
I take your point but it's removed from saying the "There will be autonomous weapon platforms everywhere regardless of our desires". As you say, "If there is an existential war", all bets may be off. Then maybe then we didn't desire peace enough.
But that doesn't take the responsibility of us to call out and shame unethical and careless misuse of technology as it arises. Fatalism isn't good enough.
I am their happy customer. I have successfully grown fluorescent yeast, and reproduced the CRISPR bacterial genetic modification protocol. Their support is awesome.
It is also possible to e.g. buy an old qPCR machine and corresponding perishables (I was slightly scared when a DHL truck delivered me a cold box full of dry ice), and run even more interesting experiments at home.
And, you can open an account at Sigma-Aldrich and order chemicals there as a hobbyist researcher (I did, and it worked).
Same here. Been a happy customer of theirs for years & even attended one of their Biohack the Planet conferences back before Covid. Everyone that I met who worked there was great. The team really goes above & beyond to make their customers happy and to promote citizen science.
Well, their products are really expensive (like, outrageously expensive for a hobbyist). From them, I only bought geneticin and something else relatively unsophisticated; if I can source the compounds I need literally from anywhere else, I'd be better doing that.
I'm curious about the yeast part. I heard it's difficult/expensive to grow yeast at home, as opposed to bacteria. Are there online tutorials that you used? I've seen plenty of bacterial modification tutorials, but not so much for yeast.
Really cool project, just worth mentioning that in some western countries ordering this stuff could lead to serious consequences and troubles with law. I live in Germany and would be afraid to get some of it.
Actually yes, the technology for mRNA vaccines was largely invented in the United States starting in the 1980s. [0] It has since been refined by multiple international commercial teams.
yes, the US played a role, but so did germany, where biontech is based. That is why it's not accurate to say "the EU is so technologically backward and anti-science", just like you couldn't say the same about the US.
Any genetic modifications would require an S1 laboratory in Germany, that is not something any private person could do. You would have to go to a university or company with an approved S1 laboratory to do such experiments.
your comment confuses me, I would appreciate it if you could please clarify -
you rent a 25m2 lab for 10 euro/m2, so 25eur for the whole lab? For how long is this price? Per hour, day, week, month?
There are restrictions on the sale of dangerous chemicals, and in general the vendors that sell chemicals simply don't sell to private persons at all. I'm not sure where the exact legal boundaries are, and whether the typical stuff you need for genetic experiments falls under some restriction. In general the chemicals you need for that aren't that dangerous, so they might not be restricted by law, but you still will have trouble getting a reputable vendor to sell to you as a private person.
I'm very aware that there are restricted and watched/reported chemicals and equipment but the GP claimed that ordering this stuff will get you a visit from law enforcement which implies that they are aware of which things the site is selling that are restricted or watched.
I asked specifically what are they selling that is restricted or watched
I mean if you're worried about bioterrorism, I'm sure there are plenty of ways and means to do so outside of convenient packages like this for someone with enough motivation.
I mean with enough motivation anyone (assuming they pass a background check) can pursue a degree in biology / genetics, get a job with access to a lab, and do the thing.
There's a difference. Building a nuke is actually really easy [1]. The hard part is getting and enriching uranium. For the bio stuff, you only need some lab equipment, where there's no reason why it wouldn't get really cheap and easy to procure.
Which was exactly my point: you can't argue that "wide access to biotechnology will do no harm, after all, people haven't started building nukes in their back yard".
Like many things, doing something for the first time with no proven blueprint is a lot harder than re-creating a process that you know works. And there's plenty of leaked/released information out there that a sufficiently interested party would very easily be able to obtain most of the steps/schematics necessary.
It's a little outdated at this point, but McPhee's 'The Curve of Binding Energy' is a fascinating read on this topic
The same stupid argument applies to anyone who orders the kit - why not persue a degree in biology and get a job in a lab instead. Obviously the kit has many advantages.
A terrorist organization, like ISIS can get their hands on a few kits, gather a few dozen smart guys and ask them to work day and night on creating say a "better" COVID virus they can spread in the West. They won't have problems supplying test subjects to the team...
Alright but let's slow down a bit here... This kit is about plants, and it doesn't give you absolutely anything that those "few dozen smart guys" wouldn't have access to in a regular university. Meaning, if you have the inclination and resources to produce a deadly virus, this kit does not make it any easier.
Oh they sell a plant kit, but that is meant for practice. They also made a dog glow-in-the-dark. The guys at the Odin have done a lot of stuff on humans too. One of them tried (and failed) to give himself a gene that would have made him a incredibly muscular, and tried (and succeeded) in performing a microbiome transplant (as a cure for IBS). They have also tried (and failed) to do their own HIV treatment.
You're right about the university thing, though. It's never been that hard to get this equipment.
This offering seems largely educational, this stuff being what people learn in bioengineering degrees anyway. And this stuff isn't really plug-and-play :) Most beginner attempts will simply fail (e.g. dead target organism, no change to desired traits, etc.). Any serious bioengineer (incl. ill-intentioned ones) would have more advanced equipment and knowledge anyway.
Electron microscopes can only see atoms with lots of electrons (high atomic number). So to observe a biological specimen with one, you need to coat the sample with heavy metals first
Because outlawing stuff shifts incentives to favour the most violent entrepeneurs?
Outlawing does not decrease demand, making stuff real expensive, so everyone wants to sell or buy it, but there's no legal protection against fraud or theft, so to meet demand, violence must escalate.
Just look back at prohibition, the drug war, outlawing guns in Britain eskalating knife violence, etc.
The way to handle the problem is not by outlawing products,but by reducing demand for them.
Why do people want drugs and alcohol? Generally to self-medicate. Mitigate the underlying causes,and watch demand evaporate.
if it's legal, it's still only available to individuals with the time, work ethic and intelligence to get good at it, the overlap of those with bad actors is probably fairly small.
If it's outlawed, it's only available to moneyed interests that need to practice institutional capture. The overlap of those with bad actors, well...
To all the folks who are so concerned about bad actors trying to develop organisms that will harm people:
Have you forgotten that the world is full of bad actors who are literally trying to eat people? There are not merely thousands of them but hundreds of trillions of them.
They spend all day long everyday trying to find a random path to something that can eat you.
It is the height of hubris to imagine that humans could outcompete that.
> They spend all day long everyday trying to find a random path to something that can eat you
It's more subtle than that. They spend all day every day trying to perpetuate themselves, which incidentally may be helped by eating you, but probably isn't. Much better to let you fly around the world and let you help them spread onto more surfaces.
> Have you forgotten that the world is full of bad actors who are literally trying to eat people?
Your premise here is false. If X thing is bad, a number of other people doing it doesn’t make it OK. If anything, it makes it worse, not better. If all your friends jumped off the edge of a cliff to suicide, would you do it?
Humans alone? Maybe not today. Humans and those organisms joining forces? I don't see how that would make the danger lesser than the random walk of those organisms unaided.
Interesting. So how hard is it to get yeast to make certain substances normally found in lets say plants or fungi? :) All I've heard it's been done before.
I wouldn't call it very easy, it's certainly routine in the lab but still can be a lot of effort. This also has to include purification, not just synthesis. And without a real lab it can get much more difficult. And many proteins are not simple, they can be rather sensitive which makes it difficult to keep them intact while producing and purifying them.
You would probably use E.Coli anyway unless you have to use yeast because of some posttranslational modifications.
Engineering arbitrary modifications is incredibly difficult, due to a myriad of factors, like working against evolutionary optimizations, lack of knowledge of the target organism, reaction pathways that don't go quite like we've sketched them, unspecific enzymes, etc. The success stories you read about are a very small fraction of all attempts. And like another user said, some things are easier than others.
People always forget—chemistry exists everywhere! And if a lab can buy it, you (probably) can too.
Anyway, hopefully this goes somewhere and we start seeing more DIY scientists running amok. It's high time for move fast and break things, biology edition.
That would be a very bad idea, as what you break is fundamental reality around you. A lot of people on this thread really underestimate the level of care that's currently taken with the sorts of labs that are used and how controlled they are to prevent exposure. It's bad enough we have environmental collapse from all other industrial activity. It's not like engineering, or even chemistry and physics, one person doing something a bit slap dash really could end the entire world in very unobvious ways. If anything we should be reversing legislatively what's already happening with big agri companies doing artificial evolution to produce new seed stock against an engineered target.
Dumb question, as a layman vaguely scared by easy access to this kind of tech: how easy is it to engineer bad stuff using these kits? (say, drug resistant bacteria)
This kit does not facilitate that kind of work. First of all, the expertise needed for the actual genetic engineering is packed here as a pre-made plasmid that has absolutely no way to be repurposed. Second, bacteria culture is something of an art and also needs expertise and specialized equipment to perform appropriately. What they provide here is not professional-grade at all.
Now, the really scary part is that pretty much any Biology undergraduate would have access to sufficient equipment and understanding to start exploring those ideas. Access to nasty viruses and bacteria is somewhat controlled now, and in theory you have to be part of a lab to be able to properly source and manipulate everything you would need. However, I think it is a much bigger risk than the average person would assume, and also one that is much harder to control because it doesn't leave an easily traceable fingerprint, like nuclear enrichment for example.
It's very easy to give bacteria certain antibiotic resistances, the mechanism is pretty much identical to the one used to make them green fluorescent in these kits. You transform the bacteria with a plasmid, they take this up and produce proteins from the genes on it. Those plasmids in the kit almost certainly have some antibiotic resistance on them anyway, that's the way you filter out the succesfully transformed bacteria.
The good news is that the resistances you can give this way are typically present in nature already. Bacteria are already exchanging these kinds of plasmids. And the bacteria you get in these kits or generally use in the lab are also harmless to humans.
I don't think you could effectively design a bioweapon with the stuff you have in such a kit. That would require a lot more knowledge, effort and material. I think at best you'd be able to create a resistant bacterium similar to those that already occur sometimes in the wild.
Engineering “bad stuff” with kits like this is virtually impossible. Synthetic biology is still difficult and expensive, and what can be done without a large budget for massive , robotically automated trial and error is still very limited.
That said, to help evolve antibiotic resistant bacteria all you have to do is not properly finish a course of antibiotics.
You are underestimating how easy it is to email a lab service to synthesise a plasmid for you... Just first hit from google is this place in the EU https://eurofinsgenomics.eu/en/gene-synthesis-molecular-biol... But you can find them in less scrupulous countries with less well trained people, and in general it's widespread as a service. Almost nothing is done to actually check for how dangerous what's being produced is, other than what you tell someone.
I don’t think so, as a synthetic biologist I usually need to iterate hundreds of plasmid designs minimum to get even simple novel pathways working. What are you going to put on that plasmid that will be dangerous, and how? What are the chances it will work?
I got several of their earlier kits - never got it to work even with most of the prep done by someone else, my bacteria either didn't accept the jellyfish genes or they just died :(.
It takes some skill to do even very simple stuff, but it's certainly plausible that, say, Covidlike events become a common weapon in interstate conflicts. My own hope is that a lot of individuals with access to this knowledge will have a much healthier arms race than a few big labs - most individuals are moral agents, so a few bad actors in a big group of people with mostly good intentions is less scary to me than a few big groups with no bad intentions but zero-sum game theory.
when you program a computer usually there are instant feedback tools like graphic output, debugger, beeps... what I really miss with genetic hacking is this immediate feedback. Did I shake that liquid enough? How degraded was that agent? What is going on in that flask? It would be nice to have a super microscope ad observe, instead of guessing high level what's going on. Well my tomato doesn't glow, how can I debug what went wrong.
This seems to be the case for most science: You poke around in the dark, illuminated by past discoveries, you might need to wait for new tools for observation to be developed, you come up with some theories that are partly correct but only the next generations will be able to prove/disprove them.
I've been enjoying listening to The Song of the Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee, which details a lot how the discoveries of cellular biology only came when e.g. suitably high quality lenses, microscopes or microneedles could be manufactured. As such, many of the early cellular biologists were at least part craftsmen as well.
Similarly for genetics, there the speed of discovery has been limited by tools: For sequencing (esp. cheap enough and accurate enough to start from limited genetic material) as well as editing the genome.
The "Thought Emporium" channel on YouTube has been exploring this kind of DIY gene editing, up to engineering a yeast with CRISPR technology, and inoculating it himself to cure his lactose intolerance. Very interesting channel in general with a hacking approach to bioengineering.
Advances in biotech are happening at an extraordinary pace, and it has been going on for decades. iGEM is celebrating its 20th year of synthetic biology competitions. https://igem.org/
Personally I think this is a dumb idea, and just handing these kits out to people who don't know how to operate in a laboratory environment is pretty reckless. For example, let's look at a popular product sold here:
> "Includes example experiment to make a genome mutation(K43T) to the rpsL gene changing the 43rd amino acid, a Lysine(K) to a Threonine(T) thereby allowing the bacteria to survive on Strep media which would normal prevent its growth."
To clarify, this is a system for introducing resistance to the antibiotic streptomycin into E.coli, a human gut bacteria. Now, these kind of antibiotic-resistance screens are absolutely the norm in molecular biology and microbiology to select for successful gene transfers in cloning experiments and so on. However, as someone who has done a fair amount of this kind of work, you don't want your experiment to get all over the place, so you work in a sterile laminar-flow transfer hood, or at least in a fairly clean lab using sterile technique (which requires some training), and when you're all done you dispose of the plates properly (autoclaving is best).
> "The evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria has become one of the defining problems in modern biology. Bacterial resistance to antimicrobial therapy threatens to eliminate one of the pillars of the practice of modern medicine. Yet, in spite of the importance of this problem, only recently have the dynamics of the shift from antibiotic sensitivity to resistance in a bacterial population been studied. In this study, a novel chemostat method was used to observe the evolution of resistance to streptomycin in a sensitive population of Escherichia coli, which grew while the concentration of antibiotic was constantly increasing."
So, passing out kits to introduce antibiotic resistance in E.coli to people who don't know sterile technique or have autoclaves (pressure cookers work in a pinch, but still) sounds pretty dumb to me.
The whole 'biohacking' thing might sound cool, but while someone could probably hack together interesting electronic devices in their basement with no concerns, or write interesting code on their computers, a modern molecular biology lab requires a lot of expensive equipment just to monitor what's going on with the cells and gene sequences and so on, as well as a lot of experience and training to avoid cross-contamination and ensure reproducibility. You also have to manage the waste stream appropriately, there's a reason labs are regulated, you don't want to be dumping strong acids and bases into the sewage system without neutralizing them and on and on.
Maybe it's not as bad as the 'home nuclear experiment kit with glowing radium paint' but it's on the spectrum of questionable ideas.
The Bacterial Edit Kit is very dangerous. The sale should be controlled. Imagine if they edit the gene of a bacterium and we get a new pandemic? Only ultra-safe labs should handle this.
No it isn't. It's a harmless bog standard strain of E. Coli used in every biology lab everywhere. Just making the edits in the 8 week course with all of the right materials supplied is not guaranteed. To design a set of dangerous genes would be very difficult and getting someone to manufacture the plasmids would probably set off some alarm bells. The companies that make these things aren't just blindly producing and shipping anything you ask for, and making those plasmids requires a really sophisticated lab. These kits are totally harmless and inline with what you might do in an intro course in college.
They are just adding plasmids with benign things, e.g. a florescent protein. These are a huge burden for the cell and are strongly selected against, they constantly spontaneously revert to the unengineered variant. It’s conceivable that you could add a plasmid to confer some dangerous capabilities to a bacteria, but it wouldn’t happen by accident, and it would not be easy. You would need to iterate a huge number of trials and designs to get a chance of one doing anything.
A malicious actor operating at scale with a lot of resources would be required, and simple educational kits like this would not be useful to them anyways. This is almost like saying educational kits for schools that contain tiny amounts of benign radioactive ore should be illegal because they could in principle contribute material for an atom bomb…
I've no idea about biotech, but it's not as if this kit has some molecular factory that can build you arbitrary DNA strands. As far as I know, there is no magic cauldron where you can throw eye of newt for adenine, toe of frog for cytosine and so on, and it would spew out a flask of plasmids built to your spec.
And that E.Coli strain... I believe I may have more dangerous stuff in my lower intestine.
In one of his videos he talks about sourcing lab supplies and he listed The Odin as the one place you should "avoid at all costs".
"Not a single kit they sent me worked", was pretty damning.
He lists all the reasons he doesn't like using them including the fact that they have sent him totally wrong supplies, and overcharge for most of their stuff.
Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=F0_q-fD_lyU&feature=shares&t=153...
He lists better alternatives that are both cheaper and more reliable.