Amateurs are trying genetic engineering at home - Yahoo! News

[dracodraconis]

Amateurs are trying genetic engineering at home - Yahoo! News

The article title says it all. One of the groups, DIYbio out of Cambridge, Mass. is even setting up a community lab with bargain-basement equipment to attempt anything from new vaccines to new lifeforms. Many of them have minimal formal training in the biological sciences, like San Francisco's Meredith Patterson, a computer programmer, who genetically altered yoghurt bacteria to glow green in the presence of melamine using less than $1000 worth of equipment, most of which she built herself.

Comments

[ancalagon-tb.livejournal.com]

wow, I sort of wished I lived near those folks :P

[siderea]

Aw, hell. There goes the neighborhood. *$@&.

[dracodraconis.livejournal.com]

I thought you'd have a comment on having a potential bio-agent release point in your neighbourhood.

[siderea]

The best that can be said is that they probably have better safety protocols than BU. Sez a woman who has worked in BU's Life Safety Department.