Re: [DIYbio] Internship Petshop.bio physical microbes store

On Thu, Apr 28, 2016 at 11:43 PM, Cathal (Phone)
<cathalgarvey@cathalgarvey.me> wrote:
 Don't do that, please. People devaluing one another's work to the
 lowest-common-denominator is the kind of peer anti-support that keeps
 everyone labouring in obscurity.

 Leaving asode the fact that a brick-and-mortar biohacking shop is costly
 (but it apparently exists!), there are significant advantages to buying a
 strain for the paltry cost of €30: strain identity can be known, sterility
 and purity guaranteed, and you're standardised with everyone else who bought
 that product and can avail of a community for support.

 I recall getting this crap when I was planning to sell an open source
 plasmid *customised for DIYbio* for around €45: cheaper than pUC18 at most
 vendors,  but I distinctly remembering someone accusing me of profiteering
 for not selling at $1. As if years of work designing and testing had nothing
 to do with making the thing and only the costs of fermentation mattered. I
 was even threatened that I'd be deliberately undercut and pushed out of
 business.

I recognize a significant difference between the IndieBB plasmid and
"mycelium". It does not have any strain listed, and if someone really
wants "mycelium" they can get it for 100X cheaper, from common sources
including most rotting lignocellulosic material (unlike custom
synthetic engineered DNA) or for a GRAS option, a grocery store. I
didn't criticize the labelled strains they had which were apparently
collected to achieve a wide-ranging color palette from a single
vendor.