[HN Gopher] The Odin - DIY genetic engineering
___________________________________________________________________
The Odin - DIY genetic engineering
Author : slim
Score : 269 points
Date : 2023-02-13 08:13 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.the-odin.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.the-odin.com)
| stainablesteel wrote:
| you guys know this is only a single step down from what caused
| covid right
| blkhawk wrote:
| almost nobody claims that. everybody knows covid was caused by
| 5G :P
| sockaddr wrote:
| > 70% of the world's population was killed by NEOBOLA-26 but at
| least they signed the EULA.
|
| I'm making fun, but this is one class of knowledge I'm worried
| about. However, outlawing it doesn't seem like a solution either.
| sigtstp wrote:
| 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.
| eternityforest wrote:
| We need some way to detect germs in realtime, without knowing
| in advance what they are, so people can evacuate buildings that
| have them.
|
| There's gotta be some miniature electron microscope that can
| look at viruses in the air or something, right?
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| It may be possible to detect Covid-19 with Nanopore's Minion?
|
| _Rapid and Accurate Detection of SARS Coronavirus 2 by
| Nanopore Amplicon Sequencing. Xiao-Xiao Li and al._
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35464969/
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanopore_sequencing
| Georgelemental wrote:
| 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
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| 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.
| nivenkos wrote:
| It's also really difficult though.
|
| Just like people building their own nuclear bombs hasn't been
| a major worry.
|
| The real issue is the CIA, FSB, etc. doing it deliberately.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| building your own nuke (at least from scratch) requires
| orders of magnitude more industrial might than biohacking
| staunton wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jun/24/usa.science
| karaterobot wrote:
| > The hard part is getting and enriching uranium.
|
| That is an important part though.
| catskul2 wrote:
| I think that's the point they were making.
| staunton wrote:
| 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".
| nivenkos wrote:
| But it still took the best physicists in the world with
| unlimited resources almost a decade to do so...
|
| That article is a nice thought experiment, but they
| didn't actually build it.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| 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
| [deleted]
| Idiot_in_Vain wrote:
| 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...
| epups wrote:
| 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.
| Idiot_in_Vain wrote:
| Yeah, a "regular university" signs up students right off
| the streets of Siria.
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| These are called regular Syrian universities and there
| are plenty of those.
| Idiot_in_Vain wrote:
| Sure, and they are happy to sign up any number of ISIS
| members?
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| The usual practice in illegal organizations (such as ISIS
| in Syrian state controllerld areas) is not to freely
| disclose member affiliations.
|
| To a lesser extent, there are some sort of universities
| in rebel controlled areas.
|
| No idea how good/bad they are.
| elil17 wrote:
| 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.
| nephanth wrote:
| Wait do you have sources for those stories?
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Most of their stuff is on YouTube.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/@TheODINinc
|
| Or just search their lead person: Josiah Zayner
| wonderwonder wrote:
| They tried and kind of succeeded in making their own
| COVID vaccine as well
| hoseja wrote:
| Only Fauci-funded Chinese laboratories have the right to
| manipulate pathogens!
| TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
| *Taxpayer funded
| Sporktacular wrote:
| * Sovereign Citizen funded
| TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
| That's an oxymoron.
| zzbzq wrote:
| Why isn't outlawing it the solution? Seems like a pretty good
| solution
| moffkalast wrote:
| Then it just gets made in secret by malicious actors without
| any kind of safety in mind.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| 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...
| TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
| 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.
| moffkalast wrote:
| > Plasmids inserted into agrobacterium can move into plant leaves
| through horizontal gene transfer.
|
| So Bioshock was right all along.
| atemerev wrote:
| 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).
| bratwurst3000 wrote:
| Where are you at? I am a hobby chemist and getting a sigma
| aldrich account is rly hard in europe as a private person
| atemerev wrote:
| Switzerland.
|
| I had to sign all the papers promising them I won't be using
| their chemicals for anything stupid, but otherwise they were
| friendly enough.
| hummus_bae wrote:
| 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.
| atebyagrue wrote:
| 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.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Now they're going be like "why is there suddenly a 10x increase
| in requests for individual accounts?" Haha
| atemerev wrote:
| 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.
| stevemadere wrote:
| 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.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| You're right. We should abolish anti-terrorism laws. Or rules
| outlawing murder for that matter.
| dataangel wrote:
| > 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.
| codeguro wrote:
| > 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?
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| 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.
| tombaugh wrote:
| 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.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| hef19898 wrote:
| 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.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| 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.
| GTP wrote:
| 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.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| 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.
|
| I respect them.
| gptgpp wrote:
| 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.
| imachine1980_ wrote:
| 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.
| gptgpp wrote:
| 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.
| GTP wrote:
| >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).
| arrosenberg wrote:
| 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.
| gptgpp wrote:
| 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.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > 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?
| josalhor wrote:
| > 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?
| jerf wrote:
| 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".
| cwkoss wrote:
| It's a lot simpler than that:
|
| - 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.
| giantg2 wrote:
| 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.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| 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?
| giantg2 wrote:
| This is a discussion about uneducated self-treatement. In
| such a case, I think it should be non-germ line.
|
| Correcting germ line issues could still be preformed by
| some trained person to avoid potentially making things
| worse.
| adolph wrote:
| The term often used for non-germ line is Somatic.
|
| _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._
|
| https://bmcbioinformatics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1
| 186...
| GTP wrote:
| >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?
| josalhor wrote:
| 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.
| gptgpp wrote:
| 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...
| GTP wrote:
| 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.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| 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.
| hansvm wrote:
| 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.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > 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.
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| 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.
| cosmojg wrote:
| 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.
| Ultimatt wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| sva_ wrote:
| I wonder how long it'll take until there are yeast cultures to
| produce various psychoactive/scheduled substances on the dark
| web.
|
| https://news.stanford.edu/2020/09/02/scientists-turn-yeast-c...
| flobosg wrote:
| There have been efforts in the last decade to engineer yeast to
| produce lysergic acid (https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog
| /2011/jun/21/scienti...). Apparently, a group managed to
| introduce the complete pathway and published an article last
| year: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28386-6
| _joel wrote:
| That'd be some interesting beer
| hersko wrote:
| Or bread!
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| You can pop mushrooms and sip an IPA, same rough idea.
|
| Standard Friday night in Denver, really.
| giantg2 wrote:
| That seems like a bad idea. Just waiting for the escape and
| autobrewery syndrome
| manmal wrote:
| Yeast/mold has been used for production of all kinds of stuff
| that is problematic in large quantities.
| icepat wrote:
| The body desensitises to tryptamines very rapidly. It'd be
| unpleasant at the start, but eventually would be
| unnoticeable.
| antupis wrote:
| somebody needs to make movie about that.
| TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
| No movie I know of, but the worms in this DF Mod:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iE0iHVChHeg
| xena wrote:
| I'm just imagining Cocaine Bear 2 being made about this.
| HN_is_for_gemes wrote:
| [dead]
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| Then we just need DIY testing kits for unintended byproducts
| Diapason wrote:
| I wonder what the regulatory powers are gonna make of that.
| Loveaway wrote:
| 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.
| sigtstp wrote:
| 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.
| strbean wrote:
| I believe it is extremely dependent on what compound you are
| talking about, and how complicated the biosynthesis of that
| compound is.
|
| A simple protein? Very easy.
|
| A complex alkaloid, the biosynthesis of which involves many
| steps? Super difficult.
| fabian2k wrote:
| 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.
| grundoon wrote:
| Am I the only one who looked at the site & thought "this can't be
| for real"?
| tagami wrote:
| 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/
| yandrypozo wrote:
| Is there any way to see the courses syllabus before buy it?
| zxcvbnm wrote:
| 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.
| scajanus wrote:
| 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.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| 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:
|
| https://www.the-odin.com/diy-crispr-kit/
|
| > "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).
|
| As far as why this is an issue:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4775953/
|
| > "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.
| bcherny wrote:
| 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)
| fabian2k wrote:
| 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.
| TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
| Proliferation of plasmids caused the Big-Daddy rebellion.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| 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.
| Ultimatt wrote:
| The question more generally how easy is it to engineer bad
| stuff, regardless of this kit. Easier than engineering good
| stuff!
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| 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.
| Ultimatt wrote:
| 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.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| 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?
| epups wrote:
| 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.
| claudiojulio wrote:
| 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.
| drdaeman wrote:
| 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.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| 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.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| 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...
| m1d4s_ wrote:
| 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.
| nivenkos wrote:
| Do they even ship outside the USA?
|
| Nevermind all the chemicals, just shipping the plant itself
| internationally for that kit might be impossible.
|
| It's a shame, the EU is so technologically backward and anti-
| science.
| atemerev wrote:
| Yes, they do ship outside the USA (I ordered their kits from
| Switzerland, they arrived in a few weeks).
| rimliu wrote:
| EU is what now?
| lantry wrote:
| don't you remember that the covid vaccine was invented by
| Americans? oh, wait a minute...
| WoodenChair wrote:
| 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.
|
| 0: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w
| lantry wrote:
| 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.
| Slava_Propanei wrote:
| [dead]
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Coincidentally I remember watching a series of YouTube
| videos where the Odin people actually created their own
| COVID vaccine.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Designed by Turks, developed by Germans, produced by
| Americans. It's like the exact reverse of the usual way
| products are made haha.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| Which parts or chemicals are restricted or watched?
| fabian2k wrote:
| 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.
| niemandhier wrote:
| Yes but keep in mind that in Germany an s1 time share lab (
| including equipment ) of 25m2 can be rented from 10EUR per
| square meter.
|
| That is less than you pay rent.
|
| They really want people to do bio stuff.
|
| https://www.bio-security.de/s1-s2-labore-bueros-mieten/
| achenet wrote:
| 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?
| boomskats wrote:
| I read this as 250eur/month for a 25 m2 space.
| niemandhier wrote:
| This, 250 bugs per month for access to the lab. Some
| machines will have to be shared. It is intended that you
| get some even cheaper office space too.
|
| Heating, electricity and some services are on top, but
| overall that is ridiculously cheap.
| niemandhier wrote:
| 250 per month, I did not notice that the link is in
| German. Sorry for any confusion.
|
| For comparison, that is about the price of a single room
| student flat.
| m3affan wrote:
| I am curious how such business model arose?
| kevviiinn wrote:
| My assumption based on their statement was that something
| being sold is restricted. AFAIK you can do genetic
| modifications at home in the US
| fabian2k wrote:
| 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.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| 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
| safog wrote:
| Check out "unnatural selection" which covers DIY home CRISPR
| setups if you're interested in this topic.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unnatural_Selection_(TV_series...
|
| I believe they cover the-odin.com as well.
|
| tl;dr: Lots good, but lots scary.
| haarts wrote:
| Is there something like hackaday.com for this kind of stuff?
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| iGEM, at least for students?
|
| https://igem.org/Competition
| Sporktacular wrote:
| 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.
| atemerev wrote:
| 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.
| TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
| We have to fight Skynet from the inside!
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Turns out the real Skynet was the friends we made along the
| way.
| Idiot_in_Vain wrote:
| Winners write the history - so yeah SkyNet is the good
| guy.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| 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.
| atemerev wrote:
| 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.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| 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.
| Dig1t wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
| wiz21c wrote:
| > 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 LOKI, we believe the future is going to be dominated by nature
| protection and consumer behaviour reengineering will be a big
| part of that.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| At THOR, we believe the future is going to be dominated by big,
| sturdy hammers and bashing of enemy heads in. Now please would
| you raise your head?
| gilleain wrote:
| Careful, you're at risk of being chained to a rock in a cave,
| with poison dripped on your head for an age...
| moffkalast wrote:
| At PLATO, we believe the future is going to be dominated by
| caves and people sitting in them, observing shadows will be a
| big part of that.
| wiz21c wrote:
| rotfl :-)
| c4ptnjack wrote:
| Any more specifics or a link to your site? Couldn't find
| anything with a few quick Google searches
| Fraterkes wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke This might be helpful.
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