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Yes there are "bio-hacker spaces" and yes, you can outsource a lot of the more delicate methods, but we won't see software-level start-ups for biotech for sever

by searine 11y ago

Yes there are "bio-hacker spaces" and yes, you can outsource a lot of the more delicate methods, but we won't see software-level start-ups for biotech for several decades for three reasons. 1. Biology usually doesn't work. Even the simplest wet-lab reactions take very exacting conditions to work. This requires precise, expensive, equipment and endless optimization of protocols. The result is a tremendous drain on resources to get what usually amounts to a negative result 2. Bio is inherently perishable. You can't let a start-up project linger as you chip away at it for 3 years. Reagents expire, lab-cultures will mutate, equipment rusts/breakdowns/gets contaminated for stupid unforeseeable reasons. 3. There is a stupidly large legal burden if you ever want to commercialize. At every step of the process the USDA, EPA, FDA, and patent office have rules and regulations to slow you down. It might take decades to take a product from the lab to the store self, if it gets there at all. Bio isn't computing. As a geneticist, I've seen it a hundred times where some start-up know-it-all walks into the biotech field and thinks its "just like software". It isn't, and never will be.

oldmanjay 11y ago
>some start-up know-it-all walks into the biotech field and thinks its "just like software". It isn't, Granted. >and never will be. Famous last words.
jmasonherr 11y ago
Second this. This article is written by somebody who clearly has not done bench science. Hacker spaces like Biocurious are cool for making things glow poorly in controlled conditions but lack the tools required for actual research or progress. Even with Science Exchange and Transcriptic, the cost of doing biology is still insanely high and the timescales are tediously long.
digikata 11y ago
What's your feeling on how much CRISPR and techniques around it may lower the thresholds for #1 in genetic engineering?
- DaveWalk 11y ago
  CRISPR/Cas9 is an invaluable tool at the bench, but it is just a tool. It makes things easier than before, but if you look to the past, you'll see that scientists are cynical people. Attitudes will change slowly (though there are 3 biotech companies jockeying for the ability to use it in clinic). I think of siRNA and its revolution in biology -- it went from discovery to practical use everywhere in record time, just like CRISPR -- but the direction of research itself did not take that same radical shift. And medicine was improved too, but incrementally.
dnautics 11y ago
Wait what? > Biology usually doesn't work. No. This is not true. Biology usually works, it's that the most interesting academic things tend to be on the bleeding edge, and that's where things are not robust. Of course, I'm not saying that there isn't debugging to be done, but it's not THAT hard. I'm doing something relatively difficult literally in my garage right now (growing a strain with a doubling time of about 6 hours). I can reproducibly make the anticancer compound in one of my strains and am working on debugging and getting a second strain running. (https://benchling.com/ityonemo/f/cHjBceoz-project-marilyn/etr-etHejg9x-culture-test-2/edit https://benchling.com/ityonemo/f/cHjBceoz-project-marilyn/et...) > Even the simplest wet-lab reactions take very exacting conditions to work. Not true. For example I have done over 300 gibson assembly reactions and have taught an intern to do this, he made 50 constructs in 2 months, with time left over for him to biochemically test 25 of them. My procedure was literally, take 1 microlitre of each DNA (don't even bother measuring), and throw on top an equal volume of gibson mix, and then go. Worked nearly every time. It is quite true that equipment requires a high capital expenditure and it's hard to start up, but those problems are able to be overcome. (e.g. http://blog.indysci.org/starting-a-lab-under-budget/ http://blog.indysci.org/starting-a-lab-under-budget/) For example, I have bacterial growth incubator that was being thrown out by herbalife when they upgraded their microbiological QC lab.
- searine 11y ago
  >it's not THAT hard. No, not hard, just crazy expensive. >Biology usually works Under the most basic circumstances. Most startups won't have a business model based on doing PCRs with a master-mix. >For example I have done over 300 gibson assembly reactions and have taught an intern to do this, he made 50 constructs in 2 months, with time left over for him to biochemically test 25 of them. Likely at a corporation with money to blow on facilities, equipment, and reagents. We are talking bare-bones start-up here. >I'm doing something relatively difficult literally in my garage right now If you want to make impure vitamins and cram them into pills, yeah I guess, but if we are talking even rudimentary biotech level work, then a garage just won't cut it.
  - dnautics 11y ago

by searine 11y ago

oldmanjay 11y ago

>some start-up know-it-all walks into the biotech field and thinks its "just like software". It isn't, Granted. >and never will be. Famous last words.

jmasonherr 11y ago

Second this. This article is written by somebody who clearly has not done bench science. Hacker spaces like Biocurious are cool for making things glow poorly in controlled conditions but lack the tools required for actual research or progress. Even with Science Exchange and Transcriptic, the cost of doing biology is still insanely high and the timescales are tediously long.

digikata 11y ago

What's your feeling on how much CRISPR and techniques around it may lower the thresholds for #1 in genetic engineering?

DaveWalk 11y ago
CRISPR/Cas9 is an invaluable tool at the bench, but it is just a tool. It makes things easier than before, but if you look to the past, you'll see that scientists are cynical people. Attitudes will change slowly (though there are 3 biotech companies jockeying for the ability to use it in clinic). I think of siRNA and its revolution in biology -- it went from discovery to practical use everywhere in record time, just like CRISPR -- but the direction of research itself did not take that same radical shift. And medicine was improved too, but incrementally.

dnautics 11y ago

Wait what? > Biology usually doesn't work. No. This is not true. Biology usually works, it's that the most interesting academic things tend to be on the bleeding edge, and that's where things are not robust. Of course, I'm not saying that there isn't debugging to be done, but it's not THAT hard. I'm doing something relatively difficult literally in my garage right now (growing a strain with a doubling time of about 6 hours). I can reproducibly make the anticancer compound in one of my strains and am working on debugging and getting a second strain running. (https://benchling.com/ityonemo/f/cHjBceoz-project-marilyn/etr-etHejg9x-culture-test-2/edit https://benchling.com/ityonemo/f/cHjBceoz-project-marilyn/et...) > Even the simplest wet-lab reactions take very exacting conditions to work. Not true. For example I have done over 300 gibson assembly reactions and have taught an intern to do this, he made 50 constructs in 2 months, with time left over for him to biochemically test 25 of them. My procedure was literally, take 1 microlitre of each DNA (don't even bother measuring), and throw on top an equal volume of gibson mix, and then go. Worked nearly every time. It is quite true that equipment requires a high capital expenditure and it's hard to start up, but those problems are able to be overcome. (e.g. http://blog.indysci.org/starting-a-lab-under-budget/ http://blog.indysci.org/starting-a-lab-under-budget/) For example, I have bacterial growth incubator that was being thrown out by herbalife when they upgraded their microbiological QC lab.

searine 11y ago
>it's not THAT hard. No, not hard, just crazy expensive. >Biology usually works Under the most basic circumstances. Most startups won't have a business model based on doing PCRs with a master-mix. >For example I have done over 300 gibson assembly reactions and have taught an intern to do this, he made 50 constructs in 2 months, with time left over for him to biochemically test 25 of them. Likely at a corporation with money to blow on facilities, equipment, and reagents. We are talking bare-bones start-up here. >I'm doing something relatively difficult literally in my garage right now If you want to make impure vitamins and cram them into pills, yeah I guess, but if we are talking even rudimentary biotech level work, then a garage just won't cut it.
- dnautics 11y ago