The Promises, Demands, and Risks of Garage Biology

As you're reading this there is an amateur scientist, somewhere, doing an experiment. Community lab spaces are cropping up across the globe where ordinary people can get together to pool resources and brain power to come up with new technologies. Many are tinkering with electronics, but some are dabbling with living systems. These "biohackers" have recently begun to organize into a movement of hobbyists that work out of basements, garages, and community spaces. I'm going to weigh in on the promises, demands, and risks that this movement represents.

The Promises

We are living in a time of rapid technological expansion. As Neil deGrasse Tyson joked in this Q & A session, "ten years ago they would have resurrected the witch burning laws had you pulled this thing [his iPhone] out." If, a couple years ago, someone told me we'd have 3D televisions and smart phones in 2011 (though I wouldn't have either), I would have laughed in their face. And don't think these trends are only true for electronics. This summer alone a DNA computer that computes (small) square roots was built, a method for genome-wide mutation generation was published, and a group programmed cells to erect RNA scaffolds that make generating hydrogen fuel more efficient.

The fact is that, though doing biology is expensive, there really are biohacking projects for every budget: isolating DNA from strawberries using meat tenderizer, soap, and alcohol; culturing and identifying bacteria from yogurt; and genotyping yourself with PCR. While you can't solve a problem in science just by throwing money at it, unfortunately you do need hefty initial investments to make novel discoveries.

That's not to say that DIY biohackers can't make contributions to science. But I do have a hard time seeing the cutting edge, fundamental research reaching the hobbyist laboratory, simply because of its associated expense and uncertainty. However, the development of practical and marketable applications is great for the hobbyist, because they are usually members of their own target audience. Plus, once a broad toolset has been developed by academic labs, making it available to more people (essentially crowdsourcing) is how you figure out the applications. A great example is the Registry of Standard Biological Parts. Through the iGEM competition thousands of undergrads (not the typical scientific workforce of grad students and post docs) have developed hundreds of practical applications for the tools.

The Demands

As Ledford (2010) points out, the DIY biotech movement has substantial analogies to the history of home computing. In its early days, home computing was a niche hobby with participants working out of their garages. Home computing also spawned calls for open-source software, and one need only look to projects like Firefox and Wikipedia to judge their success. By analogy, the garage biotech (or DIY biology, biohacking, etc.) movement—and the open science movement generally—advocate open access to scientific journals and materials. This too is gaining ground, evidenced by the popular PLoS journals, open access options in the Nature journals, and a new open access journal from Cell Press. I think that my generation, who has grown up with the expectation of quick and free information from the internet, might be the death of pay-to-read scientific publishing. Hopefully it will go sooner. If we cut the public off from scientific information how can we expect to engage them?

However, the most obvious demand of this movement is that we ought to allow biology research to take place in non-traditional environments like garages, community spaces, and basements. Further, it demands that access to research methods and supplies should be extended to those lacking the credentials we typically expect of a professional researcher. I will explore the consequences of these below.

The Risks

The examples of DIY biology projects I gave above (DNA from strawberries, culturing yogurt bacteria, and genotyping yourself) don't really raise any safety concerns. In doing research for these posts on DIY biology I have come away with a strong impression that the community is very ethics and safety conscious. For instance, does the potential to learn from an experiment justify its risk to personnel, the community, and the broader environment? And do the methods fall within established ethical guidelines for research?

Say that a biohacker wants to start a project that requires working with antibiotic resistant bacteria. First know that cloning in bacteria requires that you use antibiotic resistance. This allows you to use natural selection to maintain a population containing the cloned DNA fragment. There is a concern that some home labs won't properly sterilize biohazardous waste, and that it could be released into the environment. We can never eliminate the risk of noncompliance, but the best approach is to minimize overall risk. There is no reason to work with bacteria that are resistant to multiple antibiotics if you are doing basic cloning, for instance.

When people criticize the safety of garage biology they usually point to the possibility of biohackers with ill intent synthesizing a virus or other pathogen. The DNA sequences of a number of viral and bacterial genomes as well as toxic pathogen genes are available in online databases. A malicious person might try to synthesize a virus or produce a pathogenic strain of bacteria. Short pieces of single-stranded DNA, called oligos, that are pieced together to clone a gene (or genome) from scratch are not screened against pathogen databases. However, even small viruses contain enough genetic material to make piecing their genome together a huge undertaking. And it's important to remember that we're not even close to being able to design pathogenic genes from scratch. The only threats, in terms of genes, are those already present in nature. Don't forget that the serial anthrax bioterrorist in the United States about 10 years ago, the most high profile case of bioterrorism in recent years, didn't use synthetic biology—he used the bacteria that naturally produce the anthrax toxin. It's not clear that synthetic biology increases the risk of bioterrorism at this point.

The community of DIY biologists promotes openness and self regulation as the best means to ensure safety. I think that getting the general public engaged in science is hugely important and warrants efforts to make it feasible. Crippling regulations will surely discourage hobbyists to get involved. However, as DNA synthesis becomes cheaper and cheaper I think it will become necessary to check orders against databases of potential hazards. In this century I expect synthetic biology to build a bioeconomy, the likes of which we have never seen. More public engagement and contribution will enhance what we can hope to achieve.

Image Credits: DNA and Computer: Group Bionic; iGEM Chalkboard: David Appleyard/iGEM (via Seed); Ebola Virus: CDC (via PHIL, Image ID 1833)

References:

Garage Biology: Amateur Scientists Who Experiment at Home Should be Welcomed by the Professionals. Nature 467, 634 (2010).

Ledford, H. Garage Biotech: Life Hackers. Nature 467, 650–652 (2010).

Tachibani, C. We Are All Biologists. Life Sciences Insight 1, 42–45 (2011).