"BioCurious" entries
A commitment to biotech, in action
"I eat, breathe, live biotech,” says Ryan Bethencourt. “It’s really all I do at this point.”
This story is part of our ongoing exploration of synthetic biology and the DIYbio movement. Learn more by downloading a free edition of BioCoder.
Ryan Bethencourt seized his opportunity back in 2008. That made him an outlier: most people, after all, were seizing pink slips, not opportunities. But while the Great Recession wiped out billions in home equity and blew up companies by the score, it also freed up plenty of hard assets. In simple terms, you could buy a lot of expensive stuff for a song. And that’s just what Bethencourt and his pal, molecular biologist and fellow DIYbio enthusiast, John Schloendorn, did.
“The financial crisis resulted in the liquidation of a big chunk of the biotechnology sector,” says Bethencourt, a molecular geneticist-cum-biotech entrepreneur who was working as a business development director for a clinical research organization at the time. “So we bought up a lot of research-grade equipment. We felt we couldn’t afford to pass it up.” Read more…
Glowing Plants
I just invested in BioCurious’ Glowing Plants project on Kickstarter. I don’t watch Kickstarter closely, but this is about as fast as I’ve ever seen a project get funded. It went live on Wednesday; in the afternoon, I was backer #170 (more or less), but could see the number of backers ticking upwards constantly as I watched. It was fully funded for $65,000 Thursday; and now sits at 1340 backers (more by the time you read this), with about $84,000 in funding. And there’s a new “stretch” goal: if they make $400,000, they will work on bigger plants, and attempt to create a glowing rose.
Glowing plants are a curiosity; I don’t take seriously the idea that trees will be an alternative to streetlights any time in the near future. But that’s not the point. What’s exciting is that an important and serious biology project can take place in a biohacking lab, rather than in a university or an industrial facility. It’s exciting that this project could potentially become a business; I’m sure there’s a boutique market for glowing roses and living nightlights, if not for biological street lighting. And it’s exciting that we can make new things out of biological parts.
In a conversation last year, Drew Endy said that he wanted synthetic biology to “stay weird,” and that if in ten years, all we had accomplished was create bacteria that made oil from cellulose, we will have failed. Glowing plants are weird. And beautiful. Take a look at their project, fund it, and be the first on your block to have a self-illuminating garden.
BioCurious opens its lab in Sunnyvale, CA
Inside a new DIY bio lab.
BioCurious has officially opened its first lab, with a mission of involving ordinary people off the street in biological experiments, using hands-on learning, and promoting open source hardware and software.
OSCON Preview: Interview with Eri Gentry on a biologist's coffeehouse
BioCurious is a Silicon Valley gathering place for biologists and
other people such as artists who are fascinated by biology. It serves
for learning, sharing, and an incubator for products and ideas.
OSCON Preview: Interview with Eri Gentry on a biologist’s coffeehouse
BioCurious is a Silicon Valley gathering place for biologists and
other people such as artists who are fascinated by biology. It serves
for learning, sharing, and an incubator for products and ideas.