Biohack the Planet 2018

We have been too busy to do much blogging this Summer.  August 31 and September 1 Biohack the Planet will be taking place in Oakland, California.   
More information here
List of speakers here
It's always a blast.

Biohack the Planet - starts tonight

The annual conference Biohack the Planet is opening in Oakland, CA tonight.

List of Speakers: 

http://biohacktheplanet.com/2017-speakers/

Schedule:

 http://biohacktheplanet.com/schedule/

Tickets:

 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/biohack-the-planet-2017-tickets-34021546361

Dragon blood inspires synthetic peptide

The peptide DRGN-1 may have a pharmaceutical application to prevent wounds from becoming infected.

http://www.nature.com/articles/s41522-017-0017-2

blog of interest

With final exams looming large I am not updating this blog too much right now -  I recommend checking out Jean Peccoud's blog here. I'll be back😸.

Biohack the Planet

Meet Josiah Zaynor and many more biohackers right now - this weekend at Counter Culture Labs 

4799 Shattuck

                                                           Oakland CA 94114

schedule

Excerpt from protocol/labnotes

Excerpt from the protocol:

Nenufar – antiviral research project 01 – Expression and purification of peptide LBOUNCER from the synthetic  gene VRBNCR-01 inserted into an e-coli plasmid vector, transformed and induced to grow on bacteria.  Explore how to do this in a fast and consistent way with the highest purity.

Experiment 01A:

DNA synthesis of the VRBNCR-01 gene which is inserted into a pET15 expression plasmid with a His 6 tag on the N-Terminus followed by a thrombin cleavage site.  The gene will be cloned into pET15b via NdeI and BamHI. We will use heat transform into competent cells, then plate out on Amp-agar to grow colonies.  Induce for expression.

Then on to Experiment 01B: purification using chromatography and SDS page

I contacted a lab in the San Francisco Bay Area where we can work.  All in all, we are going to do a lot of improvising so we can stretch the budget and work for at least 6 months on the experiment. Everyone is volunteering their time. We have wonderful mentors and we are learning by doing, the biohacker way.  It is always a steep learning curve as anyone who has worked in molecular biology knows.  The journey of discovery makes it worthwhile.  Thanks to all of you who are making this possible.

making drugs with bugs

Interview with a Biohacker

Daniel Michael, operations manager at Bio-Link Depot interviews Mary Ward, co-founder of Counter Culture Labs.   Watch Mary launch her mRNA assay experiment from Oakland, California together with an international biohacking team - into outer space!

Interview with a Biohacker

Synopsis of Project

more on bacteria in space

 Nenufar Molecules for Life now has only 22 more days to reach our goal of raising the funding to do our experiment.  So far we have 5% of our funding in place, thank you all who contributed! Please take a look at our experiment and support our project with a pledge for a donation of any amount. This is what crowdfunded science looks like: 

http://experiment.com/anti-viral

programming language for living cells

MIT biological engineers have created a programming language that allows them to rapidly design complex, DNA-encoded circuits that give new functions to living cells.

Using this language, anyone can write a program for the function they want, such as detecting and responding to certain environmental conditions. They can then generate a DNA sequence that will achieve it.

more...

bio optics and synthetic bio

Utrecht, 27 May 2016

can the entire human genome be synthesized?

...and inserted into a cell?

http://singularityhub.com/2016/05/22/is-the-world-ready-for-synthetic-life-scientists-plan-to-create-whole-genomes/

Zika Virus - $10,000 challenge grant on experiment.com

Experiment.com is a crowdsourcing website.  12 research projects are competing to get the most backers for Zika Virus research.  The one that wins gets an additional 10k USD.  This was to be awarded April 27, does anyone know which project won? 

https://experiment.com/grants/zika-virus

Nenufar Molecules for Life is now submitting a project to experiment.com.  It is our project to express a peptide from a synthetic gene that we think may show anti-viral properties.  We don't know if it will be effective against Zika virus (or any virus).  Our experiment is to see if we can express the peptide and purify it,  if we can do that consistently, then it can be evaluated - but that is a separate set of experiments. 

We shall have some news on this project soon and will be looking for backers.

planning stages underway

It's a rainy day, much welcome in this drought-stricken state (California).   I hope everyone had a nice holiday. Here we are writing and revising our design and protocol for the premier experiment. We'll post more about this as we progress.  We will be making a propaganda video to raise the financing we need to get into the lab with all our materials and equipment ready to go.  Since we may or may not be successful at first, we'll work on raising enough for several experiments, fine tuning each time until we get the desired result.  Thanks for reading.  

BLOG INAUGURATION

BLOG INAUGURATION

This blog could also be titled "adventures in biology" because it is going to chronicle our journeys into the life of cells and molecules.  The San Francisco Bay Area is a brilliant point of light in the global science network (You knew that, didn't you?). I'd like to thank the citizen scientists of the Bay Area biohacker community for your kind help and support.  I'm not mentioning any names in this post but you know who you are.  Nenufar loves you!
Nenufar is preparing to conduct our first experiment to produce a peptide,  Hey, why don't we give it a name?

NML-0001

Our interest in lectins with antiviral properties led to research that indicates that this peptide may have medical applications.  We will say more about this in future posts.

We will welcome any interested parties interested in science to join with us on this adventure,  please leave your comments and questions as the experiment progresses.