History
The term "biohacking" as well as the concept of do-it-yourself biology has been known as early as 1988.
Biohacking entered the San Francisco programmer and maker communities as early as 2005, through simple demonstrations of basic experiments. As DIYbio experiments became the focus of SuperHappyDevHouse hackers, the hobby gained additional momentum.
In 2005 Rob Carlson wrote in an article in Wired: "The era of garage biology is upon us. Want to participate? Take a moment to buy yourself a lab on eBay." He then set up a garage lab the same year, working on a project he had previously worked at the Molecular Sciences Institute in Berkeley, California.
In 2008, the DIYbio organization was founded by Jason Bobe and Mackenzie Cowell and its first meeting held.
In 2010, Genspace opened the first community biology lab, Ten months later it was followed by BioCurious, and Victoria Makerspace.
Many other labs and organizations followed, including but not limited
to Counter Culture Labs in Oakland, CA, Baltimore Underground Science
Space in Baltimore, MD, TheLab in Los Angeles, CA and Denver Biolabs in
Denver, CO.
In 2016, the first conference to focus specifically on biohacking was announced to take place in Sept. in Oakland, CA.
Aspects
The
DIYbio movement seeks to revise the notion that one must be an academic
with an advanced degree to make any significant contribution to the
biology community. It allows large numbers of small organizations and
individuals to participate in research and development, with spreading
knowledge a higher priority than turning profits.
The motivations for DIY biology include (but aren't limited to)
lowered costs, entertainment, medicine, biohacking, life extension, and
education. Recent work combining open-source hardware of microcontrollers like the Arduino and RepRap 3-D printers, very low-cost scientific instruments have been developed.
Community laboratory space
Many organizations maintain a laboratory akin to a wet-lab makerspace,
providing equipment and supplies for members. Many organizations also
run classes and provide training. For a fee (usually between $50 and
$100), members can join some spaces and do experiments on their own.
Open source equipment
The
DIY biology movement attempts to make available the tools and resources
necessary for anyone, including non-professionals, to conduct
biological engineering. One of the first pieces of open source
laboratory equipment developed was the Dremelfuge by Irish biohacker
Cathal Garvey, which uses a 3D printed tube holder attached to a Dremel rotary tool to spin tubes at high speeds, replacing often expensive centrifuges. Many other devices like PCR machines have been recreated extensively. In recent times, more complex devices have been created such as the OpenDrop digital microfluidics platform and the DIY NanoDrop
both developed by GaudiLabs. Opentrons makes open-source, affordable
lab robots, and got its start as a DIY biology collaboration at
Genspace.
Advocacy
Most advocacy in biohacking is about the safety, accessibility and future legality of experimentation. Todd Kuiken of the Woodrow Wilson Center proposes that through safety and self-governance, DIY biologists won't be in need of regulation. However, Josiah Zayner
has proposed that safety is inherent in biohacking and that
accessibility should be the foremost concern as there is large
underrepresentation of social and ethnic minorities in biohacking.
Research topics
Many biohacking projects revolve around the modification of life and molecular and genetic engineering.
Bioinformatics
Bioinformatics is another popular target for do-it-yourself biology research. As in other fields, many programming languages can be used in DIY biology, but most of the languages that are used are those with large bioinformatics libraries.
Genetic engineering
Genetic
Engineers are a subculture of biohackers as one of the most accessible
forms of biohacking is through engineering microorganisms or plants.
Experiments can range from using plasmids to fluorescent bacteria,
controlling gene expression using light in bacteria, even using CRISPR to engineer the genome of bacteria or yeast.
Medicine
Restricted
access to medical care and medicine has pushed biohackers to start
experimenting in medically related fields. The Open Insulin project aims
to make the recombinant protein insulin more accessible by creating an open source protocol for expression and purification. Other experiments that have involved medical treatments include a whole body microbiome transplant and the creation of open source artificial pancreases for diabetics.
Implants
Grinders are a subculture of biohackers that focus on implanting technology or introducing chemicals into the body to enhance or change their bodies' functionality.
Some biohackers can now sense which direction they face using a magnetic implant that vibrates against the skin.
Art
In 2000, controversial and self-described "transgenic artist" Eduardo Kac
appropriated standard laboratory work by biotechnology and genetics
researchers in order to both utilize and critique such scientific
techniques. In the only putative work of transgenic art by Kac, the
artist claimed to have collaborated with a French laboratory (belonging
to the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique) to procure a
green-fluorescent rabbit: a rabbit implanted with a green fluorescent protein gene from a type of jellyfish [Aequorea victoria] in order for the rabbit to fluoresce green under ultraviolet light. The claimed work came to be known as the "GFP bunny", and which Kac called Alba.
This claim by Kac has been disputed by the scientists at the lab who
noted that they had performed the exact same experiment (i.e., the
insertion of the jellyfish GFP protein-coding gene) on numerous other
animals (cats, dogs, etc.) previously and did not create Alba
(known to the researchers only as "Rabbit Number 5256") under the
direction of Kac. The laboratory consequently kept possession of the
transgenic rabbit which it had created and funded and the "transgenic
art" was never exhibited at the Digital Avignon festival [2000] as
intended. Kac -- claiming that his rabbit was the first GFP bunny
created in the name of Art -- used this dispute to popularize the issue
as one of disguised censorship by launching a "Free Alba" campaign. A
doctored photo of the artist holding a day-glow-green tinted rabbit
appears on his website. The members of the Critical Art Ensemble have written books and staged multimedia performance interventions around this issue, including The Flesh Machine (focusing on in vitro fertilisation, surveillance of the body, and liberal eugenics) and Cult of the New Eve
(In order to analyze how, in their words, "Science is the institution
of authority regarding the production of knowledge, and tends to replace
this particular social function of conventional Christianity in the
west").
Heather Dewey-Hagborg
is an information artist and biohacker who uses genomic DNA left behind
by people as a starting point for creating lifelike,
computer-generated, 3-D portraits.
Criticism and concerns
Biohacking experiences many of the same criticisms as synthetic biology and genetic engineering
already receive, plus other concerns relating to the distributed and
non-institutional nature of the work, involving potential hazards with
lack of oversight by professionals or governments. Concerns about
biohackers creating pathogens in unmonitored garage laboratories led the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to begin sending its representatives to DIYbio conferences in 2009. The arrest and prosecution of some members for their work with harmless microbes, such as artivist Steve Kurtz, has been denounced as political repression by critics who argue the U.S. government has used post-9/11 anti-terrorism powers to intimidate artists and others who use their art to criticize society.
Existing regulations are not specific to this field, so that the
possibility of pathological organisms being created and released
unintentionally or intentionally by biohackers has become a matter of
concern, for example, in the spirit of the re-creation of the 1917 flu virus by Armed Forces Institute of Pathology researchers in 2005. In the US the FBI Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate has worked with the American Association for the Advancement of Science's
National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity to convene a series of
meetings to discuss biosecurity, which have included discussions of
amateur biologists and ways to manage the risks to society it poses. At the National Institutes of Health, National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity leads efforts to educate the public on "dual use research of concern", for example with websites like "Science Safety Security". In 2011, DIYbio organized conferences to attempt to create codes of ethics for biohackers.
Pat Mooney, executive director of ETC Group, is a critic of biohacking who argues that—using a laptop computer, published gene sequence information, and mail-order synthetic DNA—just about anyone has the potential to construct genes or entire genomes from scratch (including those of the lethal pathogens) in the near-future. A 2007 ETC Group report warns that the danger of this development is not just bio-terror, but "bio-error".
While no DIYbio project to date has involved harmful agents,
the fear remains in the minds of both regulators and laypersons.
However, it is often pointed out that DIYbio is at too early a stage to
consider such advanced projects feasible, as few successful
transformative genetics projects have been undertaken yet. It is also
worth noting that, while an individual could conceivably do harm with
sufficient skill and intent, there exist biology labs throughout the
world with greater access to the technology, skill and funding to
accomplish a bioweapons project.
While detractors argue that do-it-yourself biologists need some
sort of supervision, enthusiasts argue that uniform supervision is
impossible and the best way to prevent accidents or malevolence is to
encourage a culture of transparency, where, in essence, do-it-yourself
biologists would be peer reviewed by other biohackers.
Enthusiasts argue that fear of potential hazards should be met with
increased research and education rather than closing the door on the
profound positive impacts that distributed biological technology will
have on human health, the environment, and the standard of living around
the world.
Due to the lack of precedent regarding such a business model, the
DIYbio founders see this as an opportunity to be innovators in
regulatory and safety policy.
