15 ms·
After 15 years in tech and a life-changing psychedelic trip, I decided to self-learn genetic engineering and share it with the world[1][2] while I look for a me
by joshuamcginnis 6y ago
After 15 years in tech and a life-changing psychedelic trip, I decided to self-learn genetic engineering and share it with the world[1][2] while I look for a meaningful biotech venture to found.
What you can do today from your kitchen or home lab is remarkable. For instance, I taught myself PCR (polymerase chain reaction) and recently published my first genetic sequence at GenBank from fungi that I cultured, extracted, sequenced and aligned. I'm planning to have developed my first GMO yeast in the next 90 days.
If you're interested, I also host the EverymanBio Podcast (YouTube & iTunes) where I talk to folks doing incredible work in the biotech / startup / diybio community.
[1] http://everymanbio.com/ http://everymanbio.com/
[2] https://www.instagram.com/everymanbio/ https://www.instagram.com/everymanbio/
[3] https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuamcginnis/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuamcginnis/
- axiom92 6y ago>life-changing psychedelic trip Fascinating stuff. Any chance you could expand on this?
- joshuamcginnis 6y agoI suffer from pretty bad depression and have been battling with it for a while using all available treatments. Someone recommended I try psilocybin mushrooms. I learned how to grow them, grew them and then had my wife help facilitate a safe well-intentioned trip using 7g of dried mushrooms. Happy to answer any questions about it. It was a profound experience. It isn't a cure but it's certainly a tool in my toolbox that has helped reshaped my life in a real and lasting way.
- neitherboosh 6y agoWonderful to hear it’s had such a positive impact on your life. What part of the experience made you decide to learn about genetic engineering?
- joshuamcginnis 6y agoBy serendipity, I discovered a few YouTubers around that time who were showing how to do synthetic biology and biotech step-by-step on the cheap. After the trip, it dawned on me that perhaps I should put my intellectual abilities to work in this new field as it might bring the connection to life and meaning that I've struggled to find in tech.
- hnmm23 6y agoAre those youtubers, or their content still around?
- ketzo 6y agoSheesh, 7g is no joke. How “hard” was your trip?
- joshuamcginnis 6y agoIt was difficult and I wouldn't recommend it for newcomers.
- stef25 6y agoWeren't you a (very depressed) newcomer yourself? Don't take it bad but someone in an already bad mental state taking 2g more than what McKenna considered a god dose is pretty ... irresponsible (?)
- joshuamcginnis 6y agoI was depressed, yes. But 7g wasn't my first experience with psilocybin. I was just saying that generally, I would not recommend 7g for newcomers. As for being irresponsible, I don't know man. I grew a Schedule 1 drug and then consumed it on my own terms in a way that affected no one but myself in a positive manner. There were risks involved, but when weighed against how I felt at the time, I took the chance.
- stef25 6y agoDidn't mean to criticize. I've tripped on mushrooms, I get it. It's just ... 7g, holy crap :)
- ericmcer 6y agoIt’s hard to quantify how strong based purely on dose size, but yeah 7g is double what I would consider a strong dose. I did that amount once in high school and I didn’t touch them again for several years haha.
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- axiom92 6y agoThanks!
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- adfm 6y agoDNA[1] and PCR[2] were both realized while under the influence of LSD. [1]: https://maps.org/research/psilo-lsd/lsd-news-timeline/2054-nobel-prize-genius-crick-was-high-on-lsd-when-he-discovered-dna https://maps.org/research/psilo-lsd/lsd-news-timeline/2054-n... [2]: https://boomcalifornia.org/2015/11/12/on-pcr-lsd-and-science-as-a-wild-ride/ https://boomcalifornia.org/2015/11/12/on-pcr-lsd-and-science...
- _jahh 6y agothis terrifies me, some crazy makes a gene drive super corn pathogen and civilization crashes.
- StillBored 6y agoEnjoy: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/93448.The_White_Plague https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/93448.The_White_Plague
- entangledqubit 6y agoA childhood favorite of mine. It seems infinitely more plausible today than when I read it.
- jcynix 6y agoThanks for the link. Interesting comment there, which somewhat reminds me of the current COVID-19 situation: "The way the different countries failed to come together in the face of a world-wide catastrophe was plausible. The turn against science... while only briefly touched on, the way the angry masses turned on scientists was believable." by Clackamas in 2008.
- koeng 6y agoIt is awesome that you're getting started in this community! Here are just a few very biased recommendations of interesting folks for your podcast: There are a bunch of different cliches (community bio vs biohacking vs citizen bio vs grinders vs transhumanists are all VERY different), but I'd recommend checking out a few of the conferences. iGEM is going on right now which is super cool, and BioHTP and Biosummit are 2 I always recommend. Since you're into fungi, there are a few cool folks in the DIYbio community you might want to talk to - Rolando Cruz Perez (in Endy Lab right now, off to do amazing fungi things soon! PhD on standardizing fungi growth conditions for distribution of strains) and Phil Ross (Mycoworks CTO, extremely eccentric, very artist, supremely interesting) If you haven't followed them, David Ishee on Facebook+Twitter and Sebastian Cocioba on Facebook are also real good to follow. I love David's spirit+integrity of hacking and science, and Sebastian radiates an aurora of childlike wonder (specifically in plants) that is inspiring but calming. Might want to also give Josiah Zayner a follow, he is an interesting case of definitely knows-what-he-is-doing but still extremely controversial. He's a generous and kind guy though, and it is extremely respectable what he does. Gabriel Licinia is another interesting individual in the DIYbio community you might want to reach out to - him and Justin Atkin (the thought emporium on youtube) are some of the few folks who actually do things in the community. Real science and real cool. Gabe is the local angry man who'll always tell ya if something is BS on the DIYbio facebook groups. Those 2 also work with Andreas Stuermer, who is a fantastic DNA designer. Those 3 are quite a superpower. On the startup side, I'd recommend checking out Ryan Bethencourt's stuff. He is a great guy, transitioned from diy->startup stuff, and often helps others do too. I personally like Elliot Roth's company Spira and what they are doing with cyanobacteria and photosynthetic organisms. The future is cyanobacteria! On the non-profit side, I really like what the BioBricks Foundation is doing and what the Open Bioeconomy Lab is doing. Hope some of those things help! Glad your P.olymerase C.rap R.eaction worked - GMO yeast is easier IMO, just follow the culture timings and you'll be fine. Also Sanger is terrible, and Nanopore is awesome. I'd be happy to talk with you too if you'd like - I've been around for a bit, and I love helping other people get started in these communities! PS: on your website you say you want to "Learn to navigate GenBank". Please be prepared to be disappointed.
- joshuamcginnis 6y agoHi there - thanks for the thoughtful response and great list of contacts! I'm actually in talks with a few of them already. Rolando Cruz Perez, I didn't know about and will reach out to chat soon. Appreciate your support!
- nynx 6y agoThis is a really inspiring comment. I'm an engineering student who's kind of mentally stuck between the worlds of computing and bio. I want to do research in biotech, but I'm having trouble finding the will to do it for some reason. In a different vein, I've recently started designing a really cheap atomic force microscope, which I plan to open-source, so I think that may be a valuable addition to the bio and nanotech diy community.
- bergstromm466 6y ago> I've recently started designing a really cheap atomic force microscope, which I plan to open-source, so I think that may be a valuable addition to the bio and nanotech diy community. I hope you do
- nynx 6y agoThank you, hopefully external validation will push me to actually complete the project.
- heisenzombie 6y agoPlanning on using off-the-shelf probes in your AFM? How cheap can you get those nowadays? I remember being worried about crashing them too often with our modest lab budget.
- nynx 6y agoNo, I'll be manufacturing them. There are alternative ways of making cantilevers with atomically-sharp tips. Tungsten wire, for instance, can be etched down to less than a few nanometers. And the quartz clocks in almost all electronic devices can be decapped and used as an oscillator.
- dekhn 6y agoAFM isn't really used in biology.
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- hnmm23 6y agoi asked this elsehwere in the thread, and if you scroll lower you'll see why i want to learn but this is going to sound like a bit of a ramble as im tired and feeling passionate and emotional right now but bear with me... ..if i want to learn more bio not bc i want to hack or edit genes or whatever but because of reasons such as: understanding autoimmune diseases, the treatments for them, relationship to other issues, medication and their mechanism of actions, and just a whole host of other stuff basically i want to learn how to help people i know who suffer from multiple autoimmune diseases and the mental health/daily life and fertility struggles associated with them, where should i go? thank you!
- kingjacob 6y agoA good place to start would be to see if there's anything on NCBI Bookshelf, and then search pubmed for recent review articles. And then you can drill down further using their citations.
- joshuamcginnis 6y agoGo to scholar.google.com, search "autoimmune disease treatment", filter by last five years, use sci-hub to read the paper. Repeat until you learn enough to find your next step forward.
- hnmm23 6y agoi mean i want to learn about everything before that too, like history, links, diagnoses - to be sure, as well as testing/tracking metrics and the likes, also reading is the easy part, but what about understanding? when im running into medical terms/and other things im not familiar with or equipped to understand, where do you go? bc i find myself ending down different rabbit holes and my productivty diminishes and my thinking gets scattered i hope im making sense :)
- joshuamcginnis 6y agoIt can take me weeks if not months to fully comprehend a new paper. One paper will require that I look up a lot of new terms, watch a lot of videos explaining the terms and repeating the process for the cited references. It sounds like you need more structure so I would suggest you take notes, set goals, organize your materials and schedule time for focusing on particular topics, tasks or techniques.
- jeromenerf 6y agoI love biology yet I could not have described more opposite interests. I have zero interests in producing gmo in my kitchen, but I am definitely hooked on plants interaction and selection in open fields. Biology is pretty broad a field. Science of the living.
- john_minsk 6y agoNot to start a holy war, but what is the difference at the end of the day? Isn't one just faster?
- bregma 6y agoThere was an instructive novel written by Mary Shelley on that very topic. Recommended reading.
- nkrisc 6y agoOne occurs naturally and thus happens all around us without human interaction. So there's value in understanding how things work without any input from humans. One is more like studying a natural process while the other is the mechanics of that process.
- animal_spirits 6y agoYes exactly. The fruit might be the same at the end of the day; red, round, juicy. But there is more that goes into growing fruit than just reaping the end product. There is fertilizers which run off into lakes [1], pesticides and herbicides that get into the soil increasingly making soil less fertile [2], market cornering tactics like seed patenting [3]. I think it is more important to study how to make nature do the work of growing food abundantly with as little side-effects as possible, instead of engineering it to with no caution for side-effects. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fertilizer-runoff-overwhelms-streams/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fertilizer-runoff... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC91132/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC91132/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowman_v._Monsanto_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowman_v._Monsanto_Co.
- VoodooJuJu 6y agoI just want to point out that there is no such thing as genetic engineering. This isn't a nitpick, but an important point that investors and laymen alike can benefit from understanding, particularly in regard to avoid being deceived by exuberant claims of progress by so-called "genetic engineering" startups. The top comment [1] from another HN thread sums it up pretty well. Here's an important excerpt: ...engineering is a tradition built on minimizing variation, while biology is a science founded on understanding a built-in mechanism for generating variation. "Life finds a way"....evolution is always driving against the engineered design An engineer can design a system that creates 1000 screws with minimal variation. He understands all the effects of the different steel chemical makeups, he understands how to change the pitch and length to his specifications; he understands how to achieve each and every property of that screw, and once created, the screw will not act against its makeup. A "genetic engineer" is presented with a million million variables. In altering a variable, he may observe some change – maybe some bioluminescence in fungus, some hairlessness in a mouse. But how much also changed that he cannot possibly observe? What other variables were dependent on the altered variable? As it is life, ever in flux, how much more will it change, itself, and its environment? "Genetic engineering" should rather be called "unprecedented biological experimentation". This is important because "engineering" implies certainty, replicability. Altering some gene isn't engineering. It isn't minimizing variation in a system – it is introducing even more variation into that system. "Genetic engineering" certainly sounds cool and promising. But before you buy into a startup that employs "genetic engineering", don't be so certain; biology is much harder, much more complex, than screws. [1] Or: Biology is really hard... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21396311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21396311
- RobertoG 6y agoYour comment makes interesting points but I don't think I agree with the main point. If engineering is "the application of scientific and mathematical principles to practical ends", the search for practical uses of genetics, could be called, fairly, genetic engineering.
- spunker540 6y agoGenetic engineers sound a lot like machine learning engineers— tweaking huge complicated models which can only be understood through observation/experimentation. Often times the training is stochastic and not directly repeatable too.
- billfruit 6y agoAny books you would recommend for someone coming from CS background to get a jump start on this topic.
- Balgair 6y agoThe article has a lot of really good introductory texts in it.
- tito 6y agoSame pathway as the author! In high school, biology class meant memorizing modules of the human heart and pricking my finger to find out what my blood type was (I stayed home sick that day). "Loving biology" meant carrying around AP Bio books thicker than an unabridged Webster dictionary. No thanks. Then later in college, my friend said it would be fun if we both took the genetics class he needed to take for his pre-med reqs. I agreed, and then bombed the class exam after exam. One day right before Thanksgiving, when all the students are checked out, the profs got up and demoed their research. They got up and showed us BLAST, the 3 GB human genome, and software tools to search the genome. Most importantly, these 2 professors, masters of the genetics universe as they were, made lots of mistakes while demoing the software. They "oops"ed their way through this and that and said it was ok because the human genome had just recently been sequenced and it was all still new. "It's a UNIX system! I know this" popped into my head, and I promptly declared myself a biotech entrepreneur. After class I went up to the teachers and told them I would build them better software tools for genetics. Then I wrote every department in school I could find who used digital genomes to build them better tools. Tools for understanding the most important language the universe had ever written. 14 years later, in the wake of that realization is the first hackerspace for biotech BioCurious [1], an open source DNA copy machine OpenPCR [2], and lots of great work with the iGEM [3] and DIYbio [4] communities. These days the fun continues as I'm engineering the biggest living system out there [5], planet Earth. [1] BioCurious http://biocurious.org http://biocurious.org [2] OpenPCR http://openpcr.org http://openpcr.org [3] iGEM http://igem.org http://igem.org [4] Do-it-yourself Biology http://diybio.org http://diybio.org [5] Mining carbon from the air, AirMiners http://airminers.org http://airminers.org & Negative http://gonegative.co http://gonegative.co
- text70 6y agoI am an out of work scientist. If you want someone that is happy to chat all things bio, pm me.
- eyeundersand 6y agoIf I may ask, what were you working on before? (Just curious, feel free to disregard)
- text70 6y agoMost recently, protein engineering, before that, medicinal chemistry.
- shock 6y agoThere is no contact info in your profile.
- text70 6y agoYou can to reach me through github.