14 ms·
The Odin – DIY genetic engineering
- haarts 4y agoIs there something like hackaday.com for this kind of stuff?
- JPLeRouzic 4y agoiGEM, at least for students? https://igem.org/Competition https://igem.org/Competition
- atemerev 4y agoI am their happy customer. I have successfully grown fluorescent yeast, and reproduced the CRISPR bacterial genetic modification protocol. Their support is awesome. It is also possible to e.g. buy an old qPCR machine and corresponding perishables (I was slightly scared when a DHL truck delivered me a cold box full of dry ice), and run even more interesting experiments at home. And, you can open an account at Sigma-Aldrich and order chemicals there as a hobbyist researcher (I did, and it worked).
- bratwurst3000 4y agoWhere are you at? I am a hobby chemist and getting a sigma aldrich account is rly hard in europe as a private person
- atemerev 4y agoSwitzerland. I had to sign all the papers promising them I won’t be using their chemicals for anything stupid, but otherwise they were friendly enough.
- giantg2 4y agoNow they're going be like "why is there suddenly a 10x increase in requests for individual accounts?" Haha
- atemerev 4y agoWell, their products are really expensive (like, outrageously expensive for a hobbyist). From them, I only bought geneticin and something else relatively unsophisticated; if I can source the compounds I need literally from anywhere else, I'd be better doing that.
- atebyagrue 4y agoSame here. Been a happy customer of theirs for years & even attended one of their Biohack the Planet conferences back before Covid. Everyone that I met who worked there was great. The team really goes above & beyond to make their customers happy and to promote citizen science.
- hummus_bae 4y agoI'm curious about the yeast part. I heard it's difficult/expensive to grow yeast at home, as opposed to bacteria. Are there online tutorials that you used? I've seen plenty of bacterial modification tutorials, but not so much for yeast.
- Diapason 4y agoI wonder what the regulatory powers are gonna make of that.
- Loveaway 4y agoInteresting. So how hard is it to get yeast to make certain substances normally found in lets say plants or fungi? :) All I've heard it's been done before.
- strbean 4y agoI believe it is extremely dependent on what compound you are talking about, and how complicated the biosynthesis of that compound is. A simple protein? Very easy. A complex alkaloid, the biosynthesis of which involves many steps? Super difficult.
- fabian2k 4y agoI wouldn't call it very easy, it's certainly routine in the lab but still can be a lot of effort. This also has to include purification, not just synthesis. And without a real lab it can get much more difficult. And many proteins are not simple, they can be rather sensitive which makes it difficult to keep them intact while producing and purifying them. You would probably use E.Coli anyway unless you have to use yeast because of some posttranslational modifications.
- sigtstp 4y agoEngineering arbitrary modifications is incredibly difficult, due to a myriad of factors, like working against evolutionary optimizations, lack of knowledge of the target organism, reaction pathways that don't go quite like we've sketched them, unspecific enzymes, etc. The success stories you read about are a very small fraction of all attempts. And like another user said, some things are easier than others.
- bcherny 4y agoDumb question, as a layman vaguely scared by easy access to this kind of tech: how easy is it to engineer bad stuff using these kits? (say, drug resistant bacteria)
- _yb2s 4y agoEngineering “bad stuff” with kits like this is virtually impossible. Synthetic biology is still difficult and expensive, and what can be done without a large budget for massive , robotically automated trial and error is still very limited. That said, to help evolve antibiotic resistant bacteria all you have to do is not properly finish a course of antibiotics.
- Ultimatt 4y agoYou are underestimating how easy it is to email a lab service to synthesise a plasmid for you... Just first hit from google is this place in the EU https://eurofinsgenomics.eu/en/gene-synthesis-molecular-biology/gene-synthesis/plasmide/ https://eurofinsgenomics.eu/en/gene-synthesis-molecular-biol... But you can find them in less scrupulous countries with less well trained people, and in general it's widespread as a service. Almost nothing is done to actually check for how dangerous what's being produced is, other than what you tell someone.
- _yb2s 4y agoI don’t think so, as a synthetic biologist I usually need to iterate hundreds of plasmid designs minimum to get even simple novel pathways working. What are you going to put on that plasmid that will be dangerous, and how? What are the chances it will work?
- epups 4y agoThis kit does not facilitate that kind of work. First of all, the expertise needed for the actual genetic engineering is packed here as a pre-made plasmid that has absolutely no way to be repurposed. Second, bacteria culture is something of an art and also needs expertise and specialized equipment to perform appropriately. What they provide here is not professional-grade at all. Now, the really scary part is that pretty much any Biology undergraduate would have access to sufficient equipment and understanding to start exploring those ideas. Access to nasty viruses and bacteria is somewhat controlled now, and in theory you have to be part of a lab to be able to properly source and manipulate everything you would need. However, I think it is a much bigger risk than the average person would assume, and also one that is much harder to control because it doesn't leave an easily traceable fingerprint, like nuclear enrichment for example.
- m1d4s_ 4y agoReally cool project, just worth mentioning that in some western countries ordering this stuff could lead to serious consequences and troubles with law. I live in Germany and would be afraid to get some of it.
- nivenkos 4y agoDo they even ship outside the USA? Nevermind all the chemicals, just shipping the plant itself internationally for that kit might be impossible. It's a shame, the EU is so technologically backward and anti-science.
- rimliu 4y agoEU is what now?
- lantry 4y agodon't you remember that the covid vaccine was invented by Americans? oh, wait a minute...
- WoodenChair 4y agoActually yes, the technology for mRNA vaccines was largely invented in the United States starting in the 1980s. [0] It has since been refined by multiple international commercial teams. 0: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w
- lantry 4y agoyes, the US played a role, but so did germany, where biontech is based. That is why it's not accurate to say "the EU is so technologically backward and anti-science", just like you couldn't say the same about the US.
- moffkalast 4y agoDesigned by Turks, developed by Germans, produced by Americans. It's like the exact reverse of the usual way products are made haha.
- sockaddr 4y ago> 70% of the world’s population was killed by NEOBOLA-26 but at least they signed the EULA. I’m making fun, but this is one class of knowledge I’m worried about. However, outlawing it doesn’t seem like a solution either.
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoI mean if you're worried about bioterrorism, I'm sure there are plenty of ways and means to do so outside of convenient packages like this for someone with enough motivation. I mean with enough motivation anyone (assuming they pass a background check) can pursue a degree in biology / genetics, get a job with access to a lab, and do the thing.
- nivenkos 4y agoIt's also really difficult though. Just like people building their own nuclear bombs hasn't been a major worry. The real issue is the CIA, FSB, etc. doing it deliberately.
- staunton 4y agoThere's a difference. Building a nuke is actually really easy [1]. The hard part is getting and enriching uranium. For the bio stuff, you only need some lab equipment, where there's no reason why it wouldn't get really cheap and easy to procure. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jun/24/usa.science https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jun/24/usa.science
- nivenkos 4y agoBut it still took the best physicists in the world with unlimited resources almost a decade to do so... That article is a nice thought experiment, but they didn't actually build it.
- jobs_throwaway 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sva_ 4y agoI wonder how long it'll take until there are yeast cultures to produce various psychoactive/scheduled substances on the dark web. https://news.stanford.edu/2020/09/02/scientists-turn-yeast-cells-drug-factories/ https://news.stanford.edu/2020/09/02/scientists-turn-yeast-c...
- giantg2 4y agoThat seems like a bad idea. Just waiting for the escape and autobrewery syndrome
- antupis 4y agosomebody needs to make movie about that.
- xena 4y agoI'm just imagining Cocaine Bear 2 being made about this.
- TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y agoNo movie I know of, but the worms in this DF Mod: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iE0iHVChHeg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iE0iHVChHeg
- manmal 4y agoYeast/mold has been used for production of all kinds of stuff that is problematic in large quantities.
- HN_is_for_gemes 4y ago[dead]
- jobs_throwaway 4y agoThen we just need DIY testing kits for unintended byproducts
- icepat 4y ago
- safog 4y agoCheck out "unnatural selection" which covers DIY home CRISPR setups if you're interested in this topic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unnatural_Selection_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unnatural_Selection_(TV_series... I believe they cover the-odin.com as well. tl;dr: Lots good, but lots scary.
- wiz21c 4y ago> At The ODIN, we believe the future is going to be dominated by genetic engineering and consumer genetic design will be a big part of that. At LOKI, we believe the future is going to be dominated by nature protection and consumer behaviour reengineering will be a big part of that.
- c4ptnjack 4y agoAny more specifics or a link to your site? Couldn't find anything with a few quick Google searches
- Fraterkes 4y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke This might be helpful.
- gilleain 4y agoCareful, you're at risk of being chained to a rock in a cave, with poison dripped on your head for an age...
- moffkalast 4y agoAt PLATO, we believe the future is going to be dominated by caves and people sitting in them, observing shadows will be a big part of that.
- wiz21c 4y agorotfl :-)
- inglor_cz 4y agoAt THOR, we believe the future is going to be dominated by big, sturdy hammers and bashing of enemy heads in. Now please would you raise your head?
- tombaugh 4y agoAs a parent of a child with a genetic disorder for which it is perfectly possible to develop a therapy using current technology, I'm delighted to see that biohackers are stirring things up. Let's hope this inspires the industry to rethink their approach to drug development.
- Sporktacular 4y agoI'd imagine they'll stir up the pharmaceuticals market as much as meth cooks did. If someone makes an actual advancement with these kits, watch him get bought out tout de suite.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y agoBig mood, I've been fantasizing about a building a wet lab at home for years. There are like 5 people actively doing research on my illness worldwide and the latest experimental treatment would be two grands a week at retail prices.
- GTP 4y agoI'm sorry for your child, but I'm not delighted. The guy that you can see in one of the pictures drinking from a glass recipient was in a Netflix documentary (I can't remember the title from top of my mind) where he was advocating for everyone being able to use genetic engineering for self-improvement, even without any previous knowledge of genetics. And this is what I take issue with. Sure genetic engineering has a lot of potential and could be used even to treat your child, but as every powerful tool, it has to be used by capable hands. Putting it freely in the hands of people that don't fully understand it (and I'm myself into that group) has the potential of creating great damages.
- josalhor 4y ago> The guy that you can see in one of the pictures drinking from a glass recipient was in a Netflix documentary (I can't remember the title from top of my mind) where he was advocating for everyone being able to use genetic engineering for self-improvement, even without any previous knowledge of genetics. You mean the documentary unnatural selection. I have seen it, but I recall something quite different. He did infact advocate that at some point people will use this technology without understanding it. It surely feels like a premature opinion, but in retrospect people use many life changing technologies without understanding them either Does everyone understand what they eat? how electricity works? how their smartphone works? the drugs their doctor prescribes?
- Sporktacular 4y agoAbout Us: "At The ODIN, we believe the future is going to be dominated by genetic engineering and consumer genetic design will be a big part of that." At Cyberdyne Systems, we believe the future is going to be more autonomous, more intelligent and consumer built jet-powered laser-equipped battle bots will be a big part of that.
- atemerev 4y agoYes. There will be autonomous weapon platforms everywhere regardless of our desires, both from nation-states and non-state actors. To defend from them, you might want to understand how they work, and how they are built.
- TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y agoWe have to fight Skynet from the inside!
- SketchySeaBeast 4y agoTurns out the real Skynet was the friends we made along the way.
- Idiot_in_Vain 4y agoWinners write the history - so yeah SkyNet is the good guy.
- Sporktacular 4y agoOh, so that's what Odin is doing. Ensuring a safe, ethical future for our children. Autonomous weapons will literally be the result of our desires. Their absence could be as well, depending on what we do next. Making them go the way of bioweapons, blinding lasers or the neutron bomb will also require effective coordinated regulation, political will and cultural pressure, including publicly shaming those that seek to profit from the unethical use of new technologies.
- cosmojg 4y agoPeople always forget—chemistry exists everywhere! And if a lab can buy it, you (probably) can too. Anyway, hopefully this goes somewhere and we start seeing more DIY scientists running amok. It's high time for move fast and break things, biology edition.
- Ultimatt 4y agoThat would be a very bad idea, as what you break is fundamental reality around you. A lot of people on this thread really underestimate the level of care that's currently taken with the sorts of labs that are used and how controlled they are to prevent exposure. It's bad enough we have environmental collapse from all other industrial activity. It's not like engineering, or even chemistry and physics, one person doing something a bit slap dash really could end the entire world in very unobvious ways. If anything we should be reversing legislatively what's already happening with big agri companies doing artificial evolution to produce new seed stock against an engineered target.
- claudiojulio 4y agoThe Bacterial Edit Kit is very dangerous. The sale should be controlled. Imagine if they edit the gene of a bacterium and we get a new pandemic? Only ultra-safe labs should handle this.
- ch4s3 4y agoNo it isn't. It's a harmless bog standard strain of E. Coli used in every biology lab everywhere. Just making the edits in the 8 week course with all of the right materials supplied is not guaranteed. To design a set of dangerous genes would be very difficult and getting someone to manufacture the plasmids would probably set off some alarm bells. The companies that make these things aren't just blindly producing and shipping anything you ask for, and making those plasmids requires a really sophisticated lab. These kits are totally harmless and inline with what you might do in an intro course in college.
- drdaeman 4y agoI've no idea about biotech, but it's not as if this kit has some molecular factory that can build you arbitrary DNA strands. As far as I know, there is no magic cauldron where you can throw eye of newt for adenine, toe of frog for cytosine and so on, and it would spew out a flask of plasmids built to your spec. And that E.Coli strain... I believe I may have more dangerous stuff in my lower intestine.
- _yb2s 4y agoThey are just adding plasmids with benign things, e.g. a florescent protein. These are a huge burden for the cell and are strongly selected against, they constantly spontaneously revert to the unengineered variant. It’s conceivable that you could add a plasmid to confer some dangerous capabilities to a bacteria, but it wouldn’t happen by accident, and it would not be easy. You would need to iterate a huge number of trials and designs to get a chance of one doing anything. A malicious actor operating at scale with a lot of resources would be required, and simple educational kits like this would not be useful to them anyways. This is almost like saying educational kits for schools that contain tiny amounts of benign radioactive ore should be illegal because they could in principle contribute material for an atom bomb…
- zxcvbnm 4y agowhen you program a computer usually there are instant feedback tools like graphic output, debugger, beeps... what I really miss with genetic hacking is this immediate feedback. Did I shake that liquid enough? How degraded was that agent? What is going on in that flask? It would be nice to have a super microscope ad observe, instead of guessing high level what's going on. Well my tomato doesn't glow, how can I debug what went wrong.
- scajanus 4y agoThis seems to be the case for most science: You poke around in the dark, illuminated by past discoveries, you might need to wait for new tools for observation to be developed, you come up with some theories that are partly correct but only the next generations will be able to prove/disprove them. I've been enjoying listening to The Song of the Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee, which details a lot how the discoveries of cellular biology only came when e.g. suitably high quality lenses, microscopes or microneedles could be manufactured. As such, many of the early cellular biologists were at least part craftsmen as well. Similarly for genetics, there the speed of discovery has been limited by tools: For sequencing (esp. cheap enough and accurate enough to start from limited genetic material) as well as editing the genome.
- moffkalast 4y ago> Plasmids inserted into agrobacterium can move into plant leaves through horizontal gene transfer. So Bioshock was right all along.
- stevemadere 4y agoTo all the folks who are so concerned about bad actors trying to develop organisms that will harm people: Have you forgotten that the world is full of bad actors who are literally trying to eat people? There are not merely thousands of them but hundreds of trillions of them. They spend all day long everyday trying to find a random path to something that can eat you. It is the height of hubris to imagine that humans could outcompete that.
- Sporktacular 4y agoYou're right. We should abolish anti-terrorism laws. Or rules outlawing murder for that matter.
- codeguro 4y ago> Have you forgotten that the world is full of bad actors who are literally trying to eat people? Your premise here is false. If X thing is bad, a number of other people doing it doesn’t make it OK. If anything, it makes it worse, not better. If all your friends jumped off the edge of a cliff to suicide, would you do it?
- dataangel 4y ago> They spend all day long everyday trying to find a random path to something that can eat you It's more subtle than that. They spend all day every day trying to perpetuate themselves, which incidentally may be helped by eating you, but probably isn't. Much better to let you fly around the world and let you help them spread onto more surfaces.
- rhn_mk1 4y agoHumans alone? Maybe not today. Humans and those organisms joining forces? I don't see how that would make the danger lesser than the random walk of those organisms unaided.
- photochemsyn 4y agoPersonally I think this is a dumb idea, and just handing these kits out to people who don't know how to operate in a laboratory environment is pretty reckless. For example, let's look at a popular product sold here: https://www.the-odin.com/diy-crispr-kit/ https://www.the-odin.com/diy-crispr-kit/ > "Includes example experiment to make a genome mutation(K43T) to the rpsL gene changing the 43rd amino acid, a Lysine(K) to a Threonine(T) thereby allowing the bacteria to survive on Strep media which would normal prevent its growth." To clarify, this is a system for introducing resistance to the antibiotic streptomycin into E.coli, a human gut bacteria. Now, these kind of antibiotic-resistance screens are absolutely the norm in molecular biology and microbiology to select for successful gene transfers in cloning experiments and so on. However, as someone who has done a fair amount of this kind of work, you don't want your experiment to get all over the place, so you work in a sterile laminar-flow transfer hood, or at least in a fairly clean lab using sterile technique (which requires some training), and when you're all done you dispose of the plates properly (autoclaving is best). As far as why this is an issue: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4775953/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4775953/ > "The evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria has become one of the defining problems in modern biology. Bacterial resistance to antimicrobial therapy threatens to eliminate one of the pillars of the practice of modern medicine. Yet, in spite of the importance of this problem, only recently have the dynamics of the shift from antibiotic sensitivity to resistance in a bacterial population been studied. In this study, a novel chemostat method was used to observe the evolution of resistance to streptomycin in a sensitive population of Escherichia coli, which grew while the concentration of antibiotic was constantly increasing." So, passing out kits to introduce antibiotic resistance in E.coli to people who don't know sterile technique or have autoclaves (pressure cookers work in a pinch, but still) sounds pretty dumb to me. The whole 'biohacking' thing might sound cool, but while someone could probably hack together interesting electronic devices in their basement with no concerns, or write interesting code on their computers, a modern molecular biology lab requires a lot of expensive equipment just to monitor what's going on with the cells and gene sequences and so on, as well as a lot of experience and training to avoid cross-contamination and ensure reproducibility. You also have to manage the waste stream appropriately, there's a reason labs are regulated, you don't want to be dumping strong acids and bases into the sewage system without neutralizing them and on and on. Maybe it's not as bad as the 'home nuclear experiment kit with glowing radium paint' but it's on the spectrum of questionable ideas.
- grundoon 4y agoAm I the only one who looked at the site & thought "this can't be for real"?
- tagami 4y agoAdvances in biotech are happening at an extraordinary pace, and it has been going on for decades. iGEM is celebrating its 20th year of synthetic biology competitions. https://igem.org/ https://igem.org/
- stainablesteel 4y agoyou guys know this is only a single step down from what caused covid right
- blkhawk 4y agoalmost nobody claims that. everybody knows covid was caused by 5G :P
- yandrypozo 4y agoIs there any way to see the courses syllabus before buy it?
- Dig1t 4y agoThe Thought Emporium is one of my favorite YouTubers, he makes videos about DIY genetic engineering and I have a huge amount of respect for his rigor and detail. In one of his videos he talks about sourcing lab supplies and he listed The Odin as the one place you should "avoid at all costs". "Not a single kit they sent me worked", was pretty damning. He lists all the reasons he doesn't like using them including the fact that they have sent him totally wrong supplies, and overcharge for most of their stuff. Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=F0_q-fD_lyU&feature=shares&t=1532s https://youtube.com/watch?v=F0_q-fD_lyU&feature=shares&t=153... He lists better alternatives that are both cheaper and more reliable.
- tga_d 4y agoI have to just say, as interesting as the videos are, The Thought Emporium has some... I guess questionable ethics. They've been repeatedly critiqued for overuse of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in their experiments, and they dismiss it by saying antibiotic-resistant bacteria is already everywhere (yes it is, and the problem is going to get a lot worse if people promote using that as carte blanche to do whatever), and openly discuss how they skirt animal experimentation rules using technicalities like cooking the fish you harvested live brain matter from (you can argue whether the rules are too stringent, but treating ethics as some annoyance to hack around is blatantly missing the point). This doesn't detract from his shopping recommendations, but it does speak to the sort of concerns people have with the way the space operates generally. It's very "myopic engineer sees problem that needs fixing".
- Llamamoe 4y agoThis has come up again and again on a TTE-adjacent discord, most recently someone was sent gel stain contaminated with DNA.
- ajnin 4y agoThe "Thought Emporium" channel on YouTube has been exploring this kind of DIY gene editing, up to engineering a yeast with CRISPR technology, and inoculating it himself to cure his lactose intolerance. Very interesting channel in general with a hacking approach to bioengineering.