Biohacking topics/activities

#1

Hi, all. I wanted to open a general thread to gauge people’s interest in having biohacking discussions/presentations or activities at some point. There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on in the world of ag/food, medicine, and the environment that we could cover, and maybe some basic activities we could do (e.g., a standard classroom activity is to introduce foreign DNA into bacteria to make them fluorescent). Eventually might even be able to offer my course in metabolic engineering if there’s sufficient interest. Just let me know . . .

Cheers,
Lou

#2

I’d be interested in a workshop to create fluorescent bacteria. I’d also be interested in going any sort of wetlab-ish stuff relating to CRISPR/Cas9 to get some experience with it.

Some other things I’d be interested in:

  • Doing an electrophoresis experiment to run a ladder of some sort and photograph it. If it’s possible it’d be nice test for some type of gene, either in food or from ourselves
  • Some experiment to play around with electrowetting (maybe using OpenDrop?)
  • Creating “vegan leather” out of SCOBY or Mycelium
  • Bioprinting?

Some of these might be pretty infeasible or too much effort…

#3

Hello,
I’m interested in any and all of these, mostly because I’m a sci-fi writer and science nerd, though it’s not my field.
Abe, I have friends who made vegan leather out of a kit in their tiny parisian apartment, so I don’t think it is that hard. I’m tagging @Chris_Pelletier from 3D Bio in this convo: I feel like it would be right up his alley!
Cheers,
Béline

#4

That’s pretty interesting! Do you have a link for that kit?

#5

I would be extremely interested in any kind of biohacking/metabolic engineering!
Best,
Erica

#6

Hi, all –

Once we move into the new space, I am hoping to bring things into a little more focus. I think maybe the genetic switches course that I described in another thread might be a good place to start. It would probably be ~3 sessions long, with all proceeds (after paying for supplies) going to IG. After that, maybe we can move into either protein engineering or metabolic engineering.

Feel free to continue posting items of interest in this thread, and I’ll see how we can work them in.

Thanks,
Lou