At December 13th’s SoNYC discussion, our panel will discuss the growth of DIY science, describing some of the opportunities it presents and looking towards the future. The conversation will cover the challenges faced by DIY science enthusiasts, such as safety and accurate data collection, as well as the ways to deal with these concerns within an online world of support. In the build up to this event, we are running a mini-series of guest posts on the SpotOn blog. We will hear from DIY science tinkerers, amateur astronomers, enablers, as well as educators interested in this field. Follow the online chatter using the #DIYSci hashtag and feel free to share your own experiences.
Dr Brian Degger is a scientist with a PhD in Molecular Biotechnology from Queensland University of Technology, Australia. As part of the ‘maker community’ he produces workshops and exhibits with a focus on DIY Biology such as octopus dissection and bioplastic. He uses scientific and open source methodologies, in collaboration with artists and technologists, to creatively explore research such as DIYBiology, bacterial cultivation, accessible technology and open source science. With others, he has recently started a Newcastle Makerspace. Brian blogs occasionally at transitlab.org. You can follow him on Twitter @drbrian.
DIY science is probably the oldest science. Indeed, I see alchemists as being the DIY scientists of the Enlightenment. In more recent times, I recognise people like Darwin and Mendel as being the curiosity driven DIY scientists of their day. For me, the rise of the current DIY Science movement is being facilitated by the prosaic reason of a surplus of materials, information, education, networks. My motivation for being part of this is the idea that science should not be left to just academic and industrial institutions, but should be democratised.
In the public’s eye, some subject areas lend themselves better to DIY science than others. One good example is asteroid finding which requires relatively cheap hobby equipment. In this scientific community, amateurs are seen as making valid contributions and, in a partnership with professional scientists, important findings are then verified on expensive academic telescopes. Similarly, in the area of health, personal genomics has also made an impact, allowing people to share knowledge based on their genetic makeup. DIY Biology is seen by the public and agencies to be of a different nature because of the possibility within this large area, of doing actual genetic engineering (GE). However, DIY Biology is more than just GM; it’s about cooking, fermenting, breadmaking, plant breeding and cultivation. The appealing thing about DIY Biology is that it can be kitchen-based and can actually feed us, in a way that academic science does not. GE is a specialization that becomes feasible only after learning basic techniques such as the cultivation and breeding of microbes, plants and animals.
In its simplest form DIY Biology is close to a zero budget pursuit. For the cost of a coffee you can do a basic DNA extraction, experience the wonders of bacterial phosphorescence, and set up a daphnia or brine shrimp breeding colony. For a few more dollars, hack a webcam into a digital microscope. This cheapness does not mean it is unsophisticated. These simple experiments can teach us about quorum sensing, purification strategies, predator prey relationships, complex lifecycles, to name a few. As a community activity, both the questions and data come from the public resulting in extensive rather than precise data collection. To an extent it should be separated from the (also important) academic science public crowd sourcing model such as the galaxy classification effort, Galaxy Zoo.
For me, DIY Biology started as a self-funded pursuit, after being influenced by artist projects that used biology as a material (notably pigwings). However, recently a large segment of DIY Biologists now come from a computing or engineering background. This isn’t surprising when you consider that DIY Biology groups often start in an already established hackerspace such as DIYBIO MCR in MADLAB, Manchester. After being partnered with an academic institution and funded by a Wellcome trust grant, DIYBIO MCR has now moved to a new dedicated space, where more complicated experiments can be attempted. A different model is the nomadic lab (for instance http://hackteria.org/?p=1848 ’s 5 day Nomadic Science Lab in a bar in Prague ), where space is found in different venues, a temporary lab constructed for a short time.
In the context of GM, community labs provide the environment, the safety and the expertise to navigate a person through the complexities of biotechnology. DIY Biology works…..if you already know how to do biology. It’s an extension of the academic lab into the community, onto the kitchen table or garage. Community projects are funded by science engagement agencies (such as the Wellcome Trust), crowd funding websites (such as Kickstarter), and science engagement by museums and by philanthropists. Although DIYBio practitioners often can’t afford new equipment, they can benefit from the relentless upgrade cycle of the scientific community which results in surplus machines which need a new home. With the instability of biotechnology startups, firesales of bankrupt biotechnology firms are also a source of current technology for DIY Bio. Another avenue is the generation of new equipment using commodity electronics, personal fabrication, and microcontroller platforms such as arduino for example openpcr, a Kickstarter funded PCR machine.
An example of a successful crowdsourced DIYBio project is the microbe map by DIYBio-MCR, where bus stops were swabbed for bacteria. All of the participants were shown how to sample bacteria from the environment and the resulting data visualised as a map. What this data means is still up to interpretation. I see it more as a model for other scientific projects as it was designed in collaboration with a biological lab, and the permission of the council to swab bus stops.
On safety issues, most DIY Biology doesn’t pose any more significant issues than working in kitchens, bakeries or breweries. You do work with ‘food’, you want to culture specific organisms (as in bread or yogurt making) by using selective media, you want to minimise or eliminate contamination through the use of aseptic techniques, utilising heat, pressure, alcohols, and bleaches to inactivate experiments.
A large community of DIY Biologists regularly exchange information, advise, and deal with questions and problems on email forums such as the http://diybio.org. This is important, as it gives us a chance to critique what experiments are being considered. For example, recently a poster was considering ordering a lentivirus to do some transformations into mammalian cells. It was quickly pointed out that this was not a safe thing to do, that it poses risk to the experimenter and that it was definitely *not* DIYBio. This is an important point. People think that so much of their daily lives is controlled for risk (e.g. food poisoning), that they have forgotten that they have to take responsibility for their own safety (or have it pointed out by others), and that not everything that can be done should be done.
We also access sites such as instructables for the construction of lab equipments, openwetware for materials, protocols and resources. We are also spread over the social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Google+.
The current DIY Biology movement is young, and has already spawned groups, infrastructures, equipment and projects. In academic labs, synthetic biology experiments are going on into making biologically based sensors. The next challenge is for DIY Biology to start accessing this, to make devices that can be shared as easily as a sourdough starter, as this will represent a real democratisation, with biosensors becoming part of the Internet of Things in our homes, kitchens and workplaces.
No comments yet.