[DIYbio] Re: Limit`s of DIYBio?

How to become a Hacker Scientist

Go to school. If you have any amount of time and energy take college courses in Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Math. Sitting in college classes and doing the work and taking the tests forces you to learn. I have never found a better way to learn. Online courses can help. But don't stop at just classes. You should be devouring every scientific book you can find. Old copies of Molecular Biology of the Cell by Alberts or Biochemistry by Lehninger or Physical Chemistry by Atkins. If you are in a school that has research find a Professor to work for to learn basic molecular biology skills or find a Biohackerspace like Biocurious.
Hopefully in the process of taking classes you are teaching yourself programming. Start with C and Python these will help when you want to build your own equipment and do microcontroller programming. Start collecting equipment off of ebay or at government auctions. Buy a PCR machine and a microcentrifuge and things needed for a basic molecular biology lab setup. Start learning bioinformatics and how to use NCBI databases. You should understand how to visualize 3D protein structures from the Protein Databank and how to perform basic molecular dynamics. If you don't know all 20 amino acids and their chemical structures you SHOULD!
Hopefully you have gained access to scientific papers through a local university or library and are up to date on current research in a area of interest to you. Work on something simple but beneficial to start out with such as random or directed mutagenesis of an enzyme to function at a different temperature or have a higher rate of catalysis. Use molecular dynamics and ancestry determined from BLAST to engineer something better.
If you aren't in grad school by now learn to write a scientific paper or work with a Professor at your University and submit the paper to an Open Access journal such as PLoS One and ask them to waive the publication fee. Contact a Professor and tell him about your publication and see if he would be willing to collaborate. You still have a long ways to go but you should be fairly developed and on your way to becoming a true citizen scientist by this point. Don't kid yourself though, this won't happen in weeks or even months. This takes years and years. Studying every day and every night. Skipping parties and ignoring friends. The fun you will have and the things you will learn however will be priceless.


On Monday, January 7, 2013 5:57:58 AM UTC-6, Arnold wrote:

I want to begin by saying, I'm loving the whole Idea of DIYbio. I found out about it, maybe 2 years ago

but didn't really start looking at it seriously until about maybe 2 weeks ago(most likely because

I didn't start pcr  and splicing until recently). However, since then Ive spent many sleepless night`s 

burning the midnight oil, reading any and every article I could possibly find dedicated to it. And here

I am 2 weeks later, here to say, I think I read everything having to do with DIYbio available online. 

I can share my bookmark list to anyone interested in my claim. Is there some news source 

available that`s more extensive than this google group? 

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