[PSA] Biohacking FAQ #2: "But what if you end up making grey goo?"

[maradydd]

Over the last 24 hours I've seen a lot of concern and speculation about what happens if one of my experiments somehow "goes out of control" and turns into some kind of "grey goo" event. It seems that there's a mistaken impression that I'm just randomly mutating things (perhaps with UV stimulation) to see what comes up. This actually couldn't be further from the truth, so let me explain what I'm really doing.

How Your Genes Work can be summed up in a single sentence: "DNA makes RNA makes protein." Your genes are instructions for making several different types of RNA, and those RNA molecules assemble the proteins that your body is made of and which make your body run. Some proteins are structural, some are enzymes used to catalyze chemical reactions (such as digestion), some are used to transport other molecules around (e.g. hemoglobin, which carries oxygen around in your red blood cells) -- proteins are everywhere. So, when I think about something I'd like for a cell to do, I start looking around for relevant proteins.

In the case of "let's detect melamine", I went to MetaCyc -- a browsable database of metabolic pathways -- and looked for proteins which interact with melamine. I found one, called melamine deaminase. It's the beginning of a metabolic pathway called the melamine degradation pathway, which -- go figure -- takes melamine apart. To use this reaction in our detector, we'll need to give some species of bacteria the ability to produce melamine deaminase, which means giving it the appropriate gene. To do that, we either extract the gene from a species that already has it, or we get a lab like IDT to make it for us. Then we insert the gene into a plasmid, which is a circular DNA molecule that a bacterium can "take up" in order to gain some new function.

So, no, there is no deliberate randomness going on here -- rather, it's a concerted effort to make just one type of bacteria do just one additional thing (or, really, some sequence of additional things). The whole experimental setup is also designed so that if I screw something up, the bugs die and that's it. And, naturally, I'm doing everything I can to make sure that stray spores, phages, and other contaminants don't end up in my experiments -- heat sterilization, alcohol sterilization, flame sterilization, you name it.

Do you need to worry about these synthetic bacteria degrading you? Only if you are a whiteboard or certain species of plastic fork.

Comments

[shkspr13.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that the statistical potential for someone such as yourself to inadvertently loose a catastrophic biological agent onto the world is minuscule at best, particularly when contrasted with the statistical potential for such an incident to occur as the cumulative result of (a) the notorious and well-documented inversely proportional relationship between the efficiency of a man-made complex system (such as a military-industrial laboratory) and the number of variables in said system (such as employees), and (b) one of any number of highly-classified, but nonetheless widely-rumored, directives to such corporate entities to specifically research just such agents, even if such directives are issued with the sole intent to prepare abatement strategies in the event that such an incident occurs at the hands of others.

In short, why the heck are they worried about YOU?!

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

Most people don't understand biology, and don't believe that someone not wearing a white coat and working in a fancy lab could have any further understanding of it than they do.

People fear what they don't understand.

One of the things I most want to do is help people understand this stuff.

[bigby.livejournal.com]

I would nudge the thought somewhat:
Provided that biohackers are being safe and rational people [and posessed of both sense and intelligence] there is a near zero chance of evil plauges. The flip side is that, like every other field, some number of incompetents get in thinking they are briliant and replace careful detailed work with reckless wankery. One of the latter people is more likely to get on a darwin award list through explosion, poisoning, turning themselves into a pitri dish, but could [low but nonzero chance] let something bad loose on the world.
That said: I have met enough of that later group well on their way to, if not already having, PhDs.