The Raelian Movement
for those who are not afraid of the future : http://www.rael.org
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Genetic Science Oozes Out of Amateurs' Garages
http://www.livescience.com/health/future-synthetic-biology-research-garage-biology-100927.html
By Jeremy Hsu, LiveScience Senior Writer
posted: 27 September 2010 11:30 am ET
Melanie Swan did not panic upon learning she had inherited a genetic
mutation that seemed to put her at a higher risk of heart attack and
cardiovascular disease. Instead she and another "garage biologist" ran
a pilot study from their own homes and came up with a countermeasure.
They represent the vanguard of the do-it-yourself biology movement —
DIYBio, which aims to spread the power of genetic understanding beyond
research institutions and corporate labs.
Harnessing knowledge of genetic inheritance to create better health
outcomes represents "one flavor of DIYBio," Swan says.
A future full of garage biologists is far off, slowed by the expense
of equipment and the difficulty of the science itself. It holds the
promise of quicker and less-expensive treatments for disease, along
with the other advantages — and dangers — of widely sharing such
potent information.
Swan became enraptured with the transformative power of genetic
science while working as an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley for 12
years. That led to her most recent startup, a nonprofit service called
DIYgenomics.
DIYgenomics presents an open-source online and mobile platform for
people to better understand what their genetic inheritance means in
terms of certain health risks.
Android and iPhone users alike can download web apps that compare
genomic sequencing services being offered by commercial companies. But
DIYgenomics also guides the curious individual who wants to design
studies about how a certain genetic makeup can affect one's athletic
performance or response to a certain drug.
"We are trying to do preventive medicine," Swan said, by examining a
person's genomic data in conjunction with physical measurements for
certain conditions like macular degeneration and aging. "We're doing
citizen science experiments, where we try different interventions to
influence the levels of current biomarkers while they are still
pre-clinical," she said
Decoding your health
Anyone today can get his or her entire genome sequenced by commercial
services — at a cost of thousands of dollars. But cheaper genetic
tests, such as those offered by the company 23andme, also can give
potentially useful information for people to act on.
Genetic testing revealed Swan was among the individuals who have
inherited a deficient form of the MTHFR gene. The deficiency can lead
to higher levels of an amino acid called homocysteine in the blood.
Too much of this amino acid has been linked to a higher risk of
coronary heart disease and stroke, according to the American Heart
Association.
During her pilot study, Swan, her colleague and three other volunteers
relied upon commercial blood-testing services to monitor their health
condition. They also tested different treatments by methodically
taking Centrum multivitamins and folic acid supplements.
By testing single and combination remedies in sequence, Swan found a
particular intake of vitamin B9 and folic acid helped bring down her
homocysteine levels. The overall pilot study succeeded in slashing
homocysteine levels by 30 percent, she said — comparable to previous
results from large-scale clinical trials.
Swan hopes the broader DIYBio movement can eventually help bring down
the cost of running homegrown experiments. Rather than rely upon a
commercial company's $100 lab blood tests for homocysteine, she
envisions a shared lab space, with cheaper versions of finger-prick
tests that can be read in real time.
Introducing the citizen scientist
The idea of citizen scientists in modern genetics goes back to the
beginning of that field — it was an Austrian monk, Gregor Mendel, who
discovered the laws of genetic inheritance by breeding pea plants in
his monastery garden during the 1800s.
That kind of DIY spirit has inspired Biocurious, a nonprofit group
located in Mountain View, Calif., which offers a community lab space
for interested hobbyists and citizen scientists. Its efforts bring
together people as diverse as molecular biologists, mechanical
engineers, computer programmers and artists.
"With BioCurious, we are trying to provide essential infrastructure
and an environment for a new generation of technologists to acquire
the skills needed to leverage the power of cheap [genetic] sequencing
and synthesis," said Joseph Jackson, co-founder of Biocurious.
Exactly when garage biology might truly take off remains unknown,
Jackson said. Today's practitioners could merely be the equivalent of
a 1970s home brew computer club — or they could embody the Internet in
1993 just before the first huge boom.
Operating without corporate money or government grants is difficult.
To upgrade its facilities, Biocurious launched a project on the
crowd-sourced website Kickstarter, where it raised more than $35,000
in pledges. (In return for contributions, it offered prizes beyond the
usual T-shirts. Pledge contributors were able to snag a poster of
their own fluorescent cells seen under microscope, and even had a
chance to win a PCR machine, which is used for rapidly replicating
pieces of DNA for analysis.)
The pledges, plus monthly membership fees — which according to the
Biocurious founders are not expected to exceed $200 per month — would
help upgrade the current lab to allow more-advanced research in hot
areas such as synthetic biology, Jackson said. Unlike traditional
genetic engineering, which typically swaps in pieces of existing
genetic code, synthetic biology aims to make or redesign living
organisms by creating code that does not already exist in nature.
Testing the limits
A shortage of funding, equipment and expertise means garage biologists
still can't come close to replicating the latest achievements of
researchers such as J. Craig Venter. In May Venter's group became the
first to transplant a synthetic genome into a living cell.
Biology is very hard," Jackson told LiveScience. "There is a tendency
to overhype what can be done in the short term while not appreciating
what can be done by citizen scientists in the long term."
Garage biology points to how the practice of science, and its
benefits, can spread beyond the doors of major institutions,
universities and companies. While scientists imagine such a leap would
mean a future world where anyone with a home lab could create a better
microbe to clean up oil, they also worry that same playing field could
allow anyone to develop, say, a super-strain of the flu.
Such implications prompted the Presidential Commission for the Study
of Bioethical Issues to investigate the future of garage biology, as
part of a July meeting in Washington about synthetic biology. The
commission convened again in Philadelphia and has another meeting
scheduled for November in Atlanta.
Researchers already can put together a million base pairs from
scratch. (A base pair consists of two nucleotide molecules that sit
opposite one another on complementary strands of DNA and RNA.) In six
more years, they might assemble 100 million base pairs, or close to
the size of genomes belonging to the worm C. elegans or the fruit fly
Drosophila.
Still, leading researchers face huge challenges in figuring out how to
piece together the millions of DNA base pairs in a way that makes
sense. Not knowing how to design a functional genome from scratch
places huge limits on synthetic biology today.
Keeping a watchful eye
Despite the current practical limits on both garage biology and
synthetic biology, experts have begun considering how government
regulators could monitor synthetic biology in the more informal
settings of the garage lab.
More than half of Americans want government regulators to keep an eye
on synthetic biology research, according to a recent survey. Just 36
percent would prefer voluntary guidelines developed by both industry
and the government.
Yet detecting any threats or dangers from newly made, unknown gene
sequences could prove tricky. No biosecurity system in the foreseeable
future could predict the possibility of harm within a snippet of DNA,
according to a report released by the National Institutes of Health in
August.
The NIH did suggest that a system at least could screen for gene
sequences of known dangerous agents, such as the Bacillus anthracis
responsible for anthrax.
Companies that supply synthetic DNA have already begun to voluntarily
keep watch, so that a customer's request for a particular gene
sequence belonging to a harmful virus or bacteria might trigger a
warning. The companies have also teamed up to spot other suspicious
activities, such as a customer spreading his requests for gene
sequencing among several companies.
But Swan of DIYgenomics said, "The shorter-term worry would be the
inadvertent misuse of biohazard materials, rather than printing
something harmful from DNA synthesizers."
While garage biologists have taken great pains so far to ensure safe
working environments, Swan said, sharing expertise and equipment could
reduce the more- immediate risks of a lab accident.
Better vision through cooperation
Experts take issue with the name DIYBio, pointing out that garage
biology requires a group effort. Jackson of Biocurious said that he
prefers the moniker "DIWO" for "do it with others."
At the July meeting of the presidential commission, Robert Carlson,
head of the Seattle-based startup Biodesic, pointed out that open
collaboration not only allows more experienced members of the
community to help novices, but gives them the chance to monitor and
discourage potentially dangerous or illegal activities.
"I think that trying to keep track of what people are doing, trying to
have people volunteer and do it together, that's great," Carlson said.
The FBI seems to have embraced that collaborative approach, by openly
attending many of the garage biology conferences and workshops in
recent years. In turn, garage biologists have welcomed the FBI's
interest, because the agency has made itself the obvious contact for
any law enforcement-related issues that might arise.
Forecasting the future
No one can guarantee how well garage biology and synthetic biology
will work together to forge the future. But one resource could provide
a peek: Prediction markets have helped forecast everything from
numbers of flu cases to Hollywood box office figures.
A prediction market focused on synthetic biology may soon get started,
courtesy of a grant from the National Science Foundation and the
Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.
Just as stock market investors buy a Fortune 500 company's stock
because they think the price will go up, prediction market
participants place bets on certain outcomes, purchasing "shares" that
pay out if their hunch proves correct.
The new prediction market aims to recruit a few hundred participants
but could make do with just a few dozen, according to Patrick
Polischuk, a research associate with the Woodrow Wilson Center's
Synthetic Biology Project.
The effort is expected to help researchers pool their expertise
regardless of whether they work in a government lab or in a garage.
"In terms of goals, this is as much an engagement tool as it is a
predictive tool," Polischuk said in an e-mail. "It should be helpful
to see what kinds of questions the synthetic biology community would
like to ask, as well as helpful to potentially get some predictive
answers."
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"Ethics" is simply a last-gasp attempt by deist conservatives and
orthodox dogmatics to keep humanity in ignorance and obscurantism,
through the well tried fermentation of fear, the fear of science and
new technologies.
There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history,
it is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations.
On the contrary, let us embrace Science and the new technologies
unfettered, for it is these which will liberate mankind from the
myth of god, and free us from our age old fears, from disease,
death and the sweat of labour.
Rael
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