com dot Jankowski Tito + DIYbio

Past and present technologies seem so two faced. Cars and motorcycles represent independence – the ability to go wherever and whenever you wish. On the other hand, their use also requires new dependencies, such as the gasoline by Chevron and roads provided by the Department of Transportation. Is every technology like this?

Our first world technologies seem to simply move dependence from self to society — rather than create independence. Overall, are we better off? Are we safer or happier?

Will biology technology be different? How can we start to make it different?

Watching: The Great Barrier Reef (Hulu)

http://cadnano.org/

so i’ve mentioned this before, but constructing nanoscale stuff using DNA as your material is now super duper easy. since a A binds with T, and C binds with G, it’s like string that you can force into any shape you want.

and i do mean “you” — i know very few specifics, but i was able to build a simple DNA 3D structure using the web application in less than 15 minutes.

the only suspicious thing about the publication is they show a single structure. i’ll have to read it through again, but the general idea is you get billions of these structures in a droplet, and a lot of them may be messed up (rothemund was proud of his smileys, even the screwed up ones)

The second day (wednedsay) of the FBI conference was even better. We broke up into 5 small groups of about 10 people. My group had FBI, academics, policy, diybio, and public health people.

We walked through 2 scenarios, each discussing where our communities would get involved, or what processes would be involved at a certain point. For instance, “20 people are hospitalized for flu like symptoms, and don’t seem to respond to antibiotics”. How is the public health community involved at this point? what about law enforcement?

Opened a lot of doors, and helped me to see just how we think, and how different our approaches are; hundreds of different elements, chain reactions, escalations, deconstructions, and all built in. The world is an impressive creature.

Got a few FBI/HHS, etc contacts for the DIYbio community. Hopefully we can bust open some communication that has been sorely lacking regarding what’s ok to do in your own home. It’s definitely in between “nothing” (commonly believed) and “everything”.

This post is intended as a journal to document simple things like “where i was” and “when”, nothing more.

Saw some really cool T-38s today while i was driving home from work. took the next exit, tracked them to an airport, and got to see them up close!

An interesting day. A relaxing drive into the city, parking was intense but didn’t stress me out, I wasn’t in a big rush. Sat at the end of Post street for 10 minutes, that’s when I actually found a space.

Caught a cabbie to the Intercontinental Mark Hamill (lol) hotel. Shit, what was that guy’s name? My name is Tito, how did the rest go…

Walked in just as things were getting started. Hit with 2 introductions heavy with “WMD”, “Al Quaeda”, etc. Good to get these discussions started in the rapidly changing biotech community. Drew and Randy presented some the “science is great” talk, but they didn’t get many questions so I’m wondering what everyone else thought.

Talked with execs from febit, Blue Heron, and IDT about 1centbp, they were pretty positive. No one reacted badly to the idea of submitting purchase data, so I think getting price/length info for 1centbp won’t be a huge problem. Taking it an extra step and getting user opinions will be difficult.

• John mentioned that 75% of their orders are straightforward “user submits the sequence, we make it and send it”, whereas 25% are much more involved, requiring design.
• Also, a shout out to DIYbio, the 3 execs didn’t see any restrictions on ordering DNA to a residential address.
• Michele from JCVI said that she might be able to hook us up with some data.

Tito