Re: [DIYbio] Re: Ultra-Cheap DNA Printing/Sequencing

On 02/24/2014 10:24 PM, Nathan McCorkle wrote:
> I'm literally saying I want to do this to pay off my school loans, and
> that I wouldn't want to release my plans, secrets, or sell devices.
> I'd sell DNA as a service to begin, not at cost but likely
> orders-of-magnitude cheaper than current market prices. I'm also
> concerned with specific legal matters like ITAR (because I'm in the
> U.S.) and, practical matters like nefarious powers whipping up
> bioweapons.

So, you think open collaboration on synthesis technique using nano
elements to constrain DNA is doomed because of business and political climate?
Has to be in secret? Seems even more likely to be shut down and locked
in a closet along with the inventors if done in secret. To me at least.

There are practical difficulties with building anything with a nano part --
the tools available are complex and a high hurdle to consider using.
There are free tools for chip design though, that would let one specify
the micron scale microfluidic layers and the nanoscale zones where
a pore is wanted.

On 02/24/2014 10:01 PM, L wrote:> Well good. That should make it clear that a digital read/write chip for DNA is plausible to
create without financial ruin.

Well, maybe Bryan meant it's feasible to make one's own computer out of commodity parts,
but for nanoscale zones for novel reading/writing of DNA there're no prior building block
parts yet, are there? There *IS* going to be a high dollar hurdle to experiment in that
kind of machinery. You have some sensitive amplifiers and electrostatic power supplies
to connect to nano tiny elements, and to avoid noise ruining the effects of electronics,
the amplifiers and power supplies may need to be close to the nanoscale themselves, so
you are into chip fabbing costs. $40k per test run is what that costs.
When I said before, "nano is not in my bag of tricks", I meant practically, but I do have
experience there working for companies like Atmel, Cirrus Logic, Motorola, where the efforts
were channeled at mass market uses to be sure the development costs were recoverable.

So, to really crack this for open biotech uses still seems hard to me.

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