Despite all the buzz and the coolness and hoopla and everything else, a simple glance will tell you that DIY bio is a buzz with little so show for at present.
-- Check the DIYBio web sites and you'll see most of them have no GMOs or maybe a GFP transformation using stock plasmids or CRISPR educational kits.
Compared to industry and natural processes the ration is probably towards one in a billion.
So, the "Emperor has no clothes or barking up the wrong tree is the conclusion.
State sponsored, religious or deep pocket agents with an agenda could be a different but you'll not be able to research that as an academic :) . Also it did not happened either, and that's not by accident.
Remember rDNA is created every microsecond in organisms as part of countless natural mechanisms and it happens in me and you as we are speaking.
The risk of new viruses is higher possible with incremental mutations that normally happens when viruses jump species. That happens when uneducated people handle animals. DIY Bio contributes to education and therefore reduces the risk.
Unnecessary regulation deny people cures and ultimately are responsible for millions of deaths. Most of the fundamental medical discoveries we benefit from today (like vaccination for example) would not have been possible under today's rules.
Just follow bio-safety rules set and perform the research. Common sense.
Cheers,
Adrian
On Wednesday, May 22, 2019 at 4:36:57 PM UTC-4, Matt Endrizzi wrote:
On Wednesday, May 22, 2019 at 4:36:57 PM UTC-4, Matt Endrizzi wrote:
I hope folks might comment on the security measures taken by the DIYbio community to ensure containment of recombinant DNA. My background is in molecular biology at Florida State, Harvard Med, and the Whitehead Institute (currently Broad). I have several concerns:
1) The biological community in general seems to have concluded that rDNA is not hazardous because nothing noticeably bad has happened in the last 40 years. Look at figure 2 in this paper:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5898234/
In short, it has been shown through viral sequence analysis that plasmid DNA and other bacterial DNA can evolve into a eukaryotic virus. So plasmids we make today can contribute to viruses in the future. Risk increases with time as well as trials.
40 years is not long enough to conclude rDNA is safe.
2) Bioethics conversations focus on CRISPR application in humans. Should we be considering how our synthetic nucleic acids might affect the ecosystem that supports us? We are making nucleotide sequences that nature would likely never make.
3) I have taught high schoolers now for 15 years. If you want to know how an experiment can fail, have high schoolers do it. Whether through malice or inattention, students often make mistakes making solutions, much less performing ligation reactions or bacterial transformations. They are also not good at cleaning up. What is the competency level in your DIY lab?
4) What assurances can the DIYbio community give that BSL1 safety levels are being met and that rDNA and everything it touches are being sterilized properly?
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