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

7 Steps of Protein virtual event

This is coming up on 7 September 2017 and it looks interesting as we always like learning more about useful lab procedures with protein:  https://www.labroots.com/webinar/7-steps-protein-virtual-event

Advances made in type 1 diabetes therapy - new trials

Here:

http://www.guysandstthomasbrc.nihr.ac.uk/2017/08/09/pioneering-immunotherapy-shows-promise-in-type-1-diabetes/


also see:

https://www.diabeteshealth.com/reprogrammed-cells-in-mice-reverse-late-stage-type-1-diabetes/

Article in Nature behind today's news stories on gene editing

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature23305.html?foxtrotcallback=true

New Open Insulin video

International biohacker project Open Insulin is hard at work.  At Counter Culture Labs, after early experiments with expression in E. Coli Bacteria, the emphasis has shifted to the yeast Pichia Pastoris. Here's a new video by Noel Carrascal PhD, who is working with us on computational design and simulation of the insulin protein.  

Summer in the lab updated 07 July 2017

We are starting our synthetic gene expression experiment soon.  This will be to see if we can express a peptide in bacteria that has shown properties as an entry inhibitor antiviral.  It has been a long time getting to this stage of actually doing the wetwork.   Monday we prepared 14 amp agar plates.  

The open insulin project is also going on this summer and we are looking at expression in Pichia (yeast) after a few initial experiments with E-Coli.  This is an international project with multiple biohacker labs so if your  biohacker lab is interested in participating and developing methods for making better and cheaper insulin please get in touch with us. 
Check out the project: http://openinsulin.org/ , and here , and then leave a message here if you would like to join us (or have a bake sale for us to raise more money, as we are all volunteers but materials cost $).  

Update: 7 July 2017  
Here at Nenufar molecules for life we are waiting for the fedex delivery today of our gene of interest (VRBNCR-01) in the  pET 15b plasmid.  Last night we made 100mL of SOC, again, as our first batch appeared to be contaminated.  Tonight we'll start more media prep as the LB amp agar plates we poured are too old and the ampicillin is likely losing potency.  
Open insulin is working on size exclusion chromatography of the pichia pastoris expressing pro insulin (both inducible and constitutive expression constructs are being researched)  

Viruses of the non-biological sort

We hope that none of the readers of this blog have had their machines compromised by the recent ransomware attack.  This attack was shut down by malware tech and friends, but created a lot of havoc and dangerous situations when physicians were unable to access their patients records, etc. Since these kinds of attacks will likely become more prevalent in the months to come, please take a look at latest prevention security measures which can be found here:  https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/protecting-your-organisation-ransomware 
Big thanks to malware tech for this link and for taking out the threat.