(src)     The Open Biohacking Project / Kit

As part of his Transhumanist Technical Roadmap, its maintainer (Bryan Bishop) is pleased to release this site; to read up on the philosophy of transhumanism, check out http://extropy.org/ where you will find links to subcommunities for the debate of the ethics and morality of projects such as these, to which any interested reader is referred. Otherwise, enjoy your stay, download the kit, and be sure to join up with the rest of the community to make it better and tell us about your experiences with this fresh look at biohacking.

2008-01-28 edition: Download now (42 MB zip) (feel free to torrent)

wiki

Join the fight against cancer, against all sorts of disease! Or would you rather see some glowing bacterium, get your own ecoli farm set up to amaze your friends? This open, free synthetic biology kit contains all sorts of information from across the web on how to do it: how to extract and amplify DNA, cloning techniques, making DNA by what's known as oligonucleotides, and all sorts of other tutorials and documents on techniques in genetic engineering, tissue engineering, synbio (synthetic biology), stem cell research, SCNT, evolutionary engineering, bioinformatics, etc. And since the project is open, it's free for you to revise or share your experiences, or even share your genes (got anything cool?). The more eyes, the better-- you can't ignore these awesome possibilities (or even the not-so-cool ones*).

Join the mailing list (it's like a forum, except by email -- see previous posts in the archives) or just fill out the form below

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Possible projects (some more advanced than others)
  • Glow-in-the-dark bacteria (attaching a time-lapsed camera to this would make an awesome photoblog)
  • The classic bacteria photofilm (search: light cannon)
  • Bactoblood
  • $0 genome project
  • ... and many more! (submit one)



Quick disclaimer on the possibility of misuse
Admit it: you cannot deny the potential for misuse. Though the information to construct novel, deadly bacteria does not exist in this package (nor will it ever), the pieces are already out there on the internet and they will only become increasingly more consolidated. It is a real threat now and ignoring these threats is not the solution. Indeed, the broader purpose of this project is in fact to counter these threats via the mentioned roadmap and its developments so that we will not be harmed by script kiddies running wild, so that we will not lose lives (people) to bioterrorists or to senescence. By allowing the proliferation of open source synbio projects, like those for artificial tissue engineering organs (hearts, lungs, liver) or those for genome modifications, we are allowing a community of diagnosticians and diagnostics to develop so that we may proceed to collect as much information as possible to preserve as much as we can. People are dying, every moment, at an increasingly faster rate-- and so will you, less you try. But again: please see http://extropy.org/ or the LifeBoat Foundation for philosophy and disaster prevention activism.


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