[DIYbio] Re: Help needed: BBC Documentary in need of guidance

Do Genomikon kit for sure.  Synbio engineer new bacteria in a short afternoon.  Make them glow.    The best journalism mentions references explicitly so please make sure to do that. 

Also read the diybio faq, http://openwetware.org/wiki/DIYbio/FAQ
 


"Produces radiation" um, what.  FFS..   Note you will never get bubbling because the yields on anything a bacteria makes will be so low, that if one tiny visible bubble forms per hour, you'd be lucky.

Curiously.. the most publicly fascinating and most photographed and most filmed "experiment" of a local & highly celebrated diybio lab here in the biotech center of the world (right down the street from Life Technologies) was made when I brought in an aquarium pump bubbler and stuck the air-producing end into a big beaker of water.  Then I added food coloring to make the water green and put it near a tube rack.  The journalists loved it.  WOW!   A bubbling experiment in a biotech lab!   Filmed for the evening news!   (I'm not kidding.)  I didn't have the heart to tell them it was just water with a cheap $12 Walmart aquarium pump --- then likely they would not have cared because they just wanted sexy, emotionally-jarring images for the masses.  They had little interest in the real bacto-culture experiment growing just a table away, or the custom electronics with column filtration setup next to that.  Not photogenic enough for them I suppose.    I believe one of the biggest limitations of DIY biology is primarily the lack of education of... certain people.. people like..  hmm... let's see.. who might I be thinking of..  guess..


So regarding the radio listening audience.  Any audio will only come from the equipment you use.  Probably motor sounds from the vortexer and centrifuge and microwave oven.   Maybe the fluorescent tubes in the UV illuminator will buzz softly.   If they have a fridge, then of course that fan will make a nice hum.   Now you could make a custom electronics hack, like connect a light-sensitive resistor or photodiode to an opamp and get it to produce a sine wave depending on how bright the bacteria is glowing *but no one does that in science, that is just a gimmick for impressing poseurs* --- however you could build the circuit in an afternoon using my data acquisition article in BioCoder Issue #6 (I mention this not as a plug, only what comes to mind as a basic reference circuit which a biohacker group should be able to build up in a few hours).

You could also try using a spikerbox, with one of the spikerbox example experiments.  That makes a loud click or squeal from it's speaker when the neuron fires in a poor little insect which you've penetrated by a needle probe.  You might like that part (journalists love to vivisect don't they?).  The spikerbox is actually used in science.   A group can build the spikerbox from a simple kit in an afternoon.   Supply your own crickets.  https://backyardbrains.com/products/spikerbox


## Jonathan Cline
## jcl...@ieee.org
## Mobile: +1-805-617-0223
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On Wednesday, April 29, 2015 at 5:16:57 AM UTC-7, Sam Francis wrote:

Hi all,

The other night I attended the biohacking lab at the London hackspace and a few of you recommended I put my requests to the collective hivemind on here.

I'm a producer for a BBC Radio 4 Specials in the UK and we're doing a documentary on synthetic biology for our Futureproofing series (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04hyy1p). To help give a good idea the ease and the limitations of doing synthetic biology with DIY lab equipment we want to get our two reporters to begin the show with an experiment, which we will then use as a strand to tie the whole story together.

As such could any of you suggest an experiment that shows off the potential of the technology that two journalists un-trained in biology and largely ignorant could do with minimum supervision?

We have a few requirements:

1. the ideal would be something that works on radio
   
2. we must be able to start and complete the experiment in two weeks
3. the experiment can be carried out using only basic kit or the equipment at the London hackspace (https://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/Group:Biohacking )
4. it must be interesting enough to capture the imagination of the outside world

Any ideas, musings or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Best wishes,

Sam