New biohacking from the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective (previously): the Pegleg, a stripped-down Piratebox (previously) based on a Raspberry Pi 0 with needless components removed and an extra wifi card soldered on. Read the rest
The Open Insulin project ("a team of Bay Area biohackers working on newer, simpler, less expensive ways to make insulin") is trying to create an open source hardware system for making insulin in small batches, through a process that uses engineered yeast to "produce a modified proinsulin protein, and an enzyme to convert the modified proinsulin into insulin glargine" so that insulin co-ops can produce and test their own insulin for a cost "from ten thousand to a few tens of thousands of dollars." Read the rest
OpenDrop is a ~$800 microfluidics platform from GaudiLabs. It can be used to programmatically move droplets of liquid around a matrix. When I saw the video, I thought it was an LCD display, but it's real liquid being moved around.
Potential applications are lab on a chip devices for automating processes of digital biology. However the present design should also open the technology to other field and allow experimentation to find new applications. Including the field of art, music, games and education.
Biohacker Aaron Traywick, who self-experimented with unregulated medical products in front of live audiences, was found dead in a flotation tank at a spa in Washington, DC on Sunday.
The 28-year-old CEO of Ascendance Biomedical was known for promoting self-medicating and used himself as a guinea pig at public events. For instance, Traywick, who had herpes, appeared before an audience earlier this year and took off his pants so that he could be the first to inject himself with an unregulated medication his company created to combat herpes and AIDS (watch video below).
According to BBC:
Traywick, who had herpes, had performed a stunt at the event, apparently injecting his company's unregulated product into his leg.
On stage, he had referred to the product as a "research compound".
But in conversation with the BBC he described it as a "treatment" - a claim that had the potential to attract the attention of the US Food and Drug Administration...
When questioned whether it was ethical to encourage sick people to effectively act as guinea pigs, Traywick responded: "The best we can do is we can say to these people, 'We know you don't have access to this medication.'
"They don't have any other options.
"All we know is that if it works they don't die."
The cause of his death hasn't yet been disclosed.
For the full video click here. Read the rest
Today at the Usenix Security conference, a group of University of Washington researchers will present a paper showing how they wrote a piece of malware that attacks common gene-sequencing devices and encoded it into a strand of DNA: gene sequencers that read the malware are corrupted by it, giving control to the attackers. Read the rest
Are you an "artist, designer, biohacker, or other cultural practitioner" who's interested in synthetic biology? You could spend 4-6 weeks in Zurich at the Bioprocess Laboratory, where you will "actively engage with scientists working on a synthetic biology related project with focus on the design of antibiotics." Read the rest
Editor's note: The following is a first-person account of a personal experience, and should not be taken as medical advice or a recommendation of any kind. If you choose to pursue biohacking as a result of reading this article and something goes wrong, you are not allowed to blame us or the author.
A few months ago, on a last-minute whim of curiosity, I attended a biohacking gathering. When I departed L.A. for a random small town address in the Mojave desert, I did not know I would return 36 hours later with my hand wrapped in a bandage, having willingly undergone an unnecessary medical procedure in a wacky garage-turned-mad-science-lab with some guy I'd never met. I did not know I’d be grinning all the way home because I’d become one step closer to being a cyborg. Read the rest
Dave Asprey, the far-out biohacker and self-experimenter who skeptics love to hate, just got $9 million to build coffee shops that sell "Bulletproof Coffee," which is mold-free coffee blended with unsalted grass fed butter and medium-chain triglyceride (MCT) oil. I've had it before and the only thing I can say about it is that it is delicious.
Here's Asprey showing how to make Bulletproof Coffee.
Here's a video in which podcaster Joe Rogan, who used to be a fan of Dave Asprey, debunks Asprey's claims that mycotoxins in coffee are common and bad for you.
Joe Rogan exposes the lies of Dave Asprey the owner of Bulletproof Coffee about how he lied and said 70% of coffee is contaminated with mycotoxins without any evidence. Onnit labs tested random coffee including Starbucks, and the results showed they contained NO mycotoxins. Coffee growers have already known how to remove toxins from their beans decades ago.
Here is Kris Gunnars' takedown of Bulletproof Coffee.
And here is Chris Gayomali's article on what it was like to drink Bulletproof Coffee every morning for two weeks. Read the rest
A group of biohackers is injecting a substance called Chlorin e6 into their eyes to give them temporary night vision.
Read the restDid it work? Yes. It started with shapes, hung about 10 meters away. "I'm talking like the size of my hand," Licina says. Before long, they were able to do longer distances, recognizing symbols and identifying moving subjects against different backgrounds.
"The other test, we had people go stand in the woods," he says. "At 50 meters, we could figure out where they were, even if they were standing up against a tree." Each time, Licina had a 100% success rate. The control group, without being dosed with Ce6, only got them right a third of the time.
The biohackers at BioCurious and Counter Culture Labs are seeking support in their effort to bioengineer baker's yeast to make Real Vegan Cheese!
Real Vegan Cheese is a not a cheese substitute! It all begins with regular old baker's yeast. Through synthetic biology, we engineer our yeast to become milk-protein factories, churning out real milk proteins (known as caseins). These milk proteins are then combined with water, vegan sugar and oil to make a kind of milk which is ultimately converted into Real Vegan Cheese using the age-old cheese-making process.
Real Vegan Cheese (Thanks, Eri Gentry!) Read the rest
