Institute For The Future

Biohacking

I just finished listening to a talk by GinkgoBioworks' Reshma Shetty and Barry Canton at the O'Reilly Emerging Tech Conference. Though talk may be the wrong word--Shetty and Canton handed out bacterial cultures along with DNA strips and kits that audience members could use to turn the bacteria red, to make it glow in the dark, or to make it smell like bananas (but not all three together.) In a couple of days, our engineered bacteria--which don't pose any risk to people, health or otherwise--will be ready.

 

If it seems odd now that a group of people in a hotel room might be engineering bacteria without any lab equipment or other materials, it might not one day, at least if GingkoBioworks and others succeed in developing engineering standards for DNA that mirror the sorts of standards in traditional engineering fields. As Shetty noted, standard biological parts would effectively allow home tinkerers, biologists, and pretty much anyone else to perform the sorts of experiments we performed in the conference room--with much greater complexity.

 

What does it mean when a random collection of untrained people can fundamentally alter the biology of bacteria with less specialized equipment than one might find in a high school science class? The range of applications--from energy to medicine--is enormous.

 

But here's one guess as to where DIY synthetic biology might first find a home: in conjunction with direct-to-consumer genetic testing, a standard toolbox of synthetic biological parts could enable almost anyone to try their hand at bioengineering, and it's easy to imagine that individuals with untreatable diseases might be inspired to become the cutting edge tinkerers.