Love to see this stuff is happening. I’m a genetics grad student who is frustrated with bureaucracy, politics and general lack of inspiration in my current lab. It makes me question my career goal to become a genetics professor.

But to see that there are models for experimental, non-hierarchical ‘hacker’ biology out there is a sign of light!

Hope I can become involved in something like this in Vancouver in the next few years!

I don’t want to be a nay-sayer, but this stuff is expensive and difficult. Academic groups have millions to spend, and to achieve something worthwhile they still have to save wherever possible. On top of that, it often doesn’t work, and you will never, ever know why. I’ll repeat that. In molecular biology, things regularly do not work, and no matter how much you troubleshoot, you may never find out why.

If you are a home Make enthusiast, please, please do some work experience in a molecular biology lab before going crazy on eBay and buying lots of expensive second-hand stuff. You need to have a lot of experience before knowing what you should buy, and for how much, and exactly what is possible with the available tools. If you’re really interested in achieving something, the best way remains doing a PhD full-time, developing your ideas with and learning from other people who do this all day, every day, submitting a grant and establishing a laboratory in a faculty with other people who can help you!

I like the idea that someone will come up with a homebrew invention that will change the world, but after 10 years in the field, I have little faith that someone’s garage is the best place for it. Not until DNA sequencing, oligonucleotide synthesis, enzyme production, fluorescence can be done at home to the required standard. Remember that these are just the first steps in a massive pipeline.

If I wanted to get a really awesome book about bio stuff I could do at home (think the Make:Electronics book), what should I get?

–Jason Scott

The cost of consumables in biotech is enormous compared with silicon tech, so biotech firms are notorious for plowing through cash. Without a constant stream of cash, this operation won’t survive. A bigger problem is that any significant biotech work (anything beyond high school lab demos and parlor tricks) requires a tremendous amount of time and focus. The research universities are full of dilettante scientists who call themselves postdocs and don’t get anything done because of endless dithering, tinkering and noodling. In a way, the idea of a collaborative work space for biotech has been done many times over at universities, and it’s a pretty lousy model for getting things done. I speak from 12 years experience in such labs.

That being said, I see three kinds of people who might benefit from such a workspace. One type is the enthusiastic amateur who wants to acquire some basic lab skills without doing internship in an academic research lab. Another is the engineer or artist looking to interact with biology/chemistry types to vet ideas. Finally, there’s the true genius freak pursuing a solitary vision of beautiful but insane science… this guy is usually a quiet microbiologist who has trouble articulating his/her ideas and thus can’t get conventional funding.