Personally 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.

Personally 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.